
CQESQ&ISr DEPOSm 



^-^ 



Mediaeval Europe 



(814-1300) -^T"^ *) 



BY 



EPHRAIM EMERTON, Ph.D. 

Professor of History in Harvard University 






BOSTON, U.S.A. 

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS 

1894 






Copyright, 1894 
By EPHRAIM EMERTON 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 




TO 



Cbarles Carroll ^Everett 

THIS VOLUME IS 
DEDICATED 



PREFACE. 



The present volume owes its origin to repeated requests, 
coming from widely scattered and widely different sources, 
that I would go on with the history of continental Europe 
from the point where it was left at the close of a little book 
published in the year 1888. That earlier book, "An Intro- 
duction to the Study of the Middle Ages," was written in 
the hope that it might fill a place, at that time unoccupied, 
between the manuals of Roman history and those upon 
mediaeval times. This hope has been fairly realized, and 
the many kind expressions of good-will it has brought me 
have given me confidence for this new venture. 

When I began the former volume I had in mind a reader 
of about fifteen years of age ; but this person grew insensibly 
older as the work progressed, and, in fact, the book has found 
its chief use in the earlier stages of college teaching. This 
second book will assume a certain familiarity with the period 
covered by the former, a period now, happily, to be studied 
in more than one excellent manual. It has for its subject 
the period extending from the death of Charlemagne to about 
the middle of the thirteenth century, and it seems important 
to justify in some way this selection of limits. The division 
of history into periods is at best a very doubtful matter. 
Any attempt of the sort must seem to violate the first great 
canon of historical science that history admits of no breaks 
in its continuity. All division must needs be arbitrary, and 
one principle of division is better than another only in so 
far as it does less violence to that fundamental idea of an 



vi PRE FA CE. 

organic unity. The least dangerous system would be that 
which should try to define each period by some quality 
plainly peculiar to it, not shared by others, or at least 
not in the same degree, — a something which is common to 
the whole of the given period and distinguishes it from 
every other. 

Is there such a criterion by which the true limits of the 
mediaeval period may be determined ? The conventional 
use of the term "mediaeval" is, judged by this standard, 
most misleading. It includes a period of about a thousand 
years, in which the most divergent phases of human life are 
presented. Between the civilization of Italy in the seventh 
and in the fifteenth centuries, there is less in common than 
between the life of Athens and that of Boston. If, under 
such a division, we speak of mediaeval art, do we mean the 
mosaics of Ravenna, the illuminations of Charles the Bald's 
missal or the canvases of Raphael ? Does mediaeval litera- 
ture mean the treatises of Abelard, the songs of the trouba- 
dours, the monastic chronicles or the splendid vacuities of 
the Renaissance } Shall we look for mediaeval law in the 
early barbaric codes, or in the coiifumes of the thirteenth, or 
m th.Q corpus J in'is oi the sixteenth century.'' Used in this 
way, the term mediaeval means so much that it comes to 
mean nothing. One is continually forced to re-define the 
word in order to be intelligible. 

Yet there is a period of history to which this word may be 
applied without much fear of error. From the beginning of 
the Germanic migrations to the time of Charlemagne the 
only significant word to describe the character of European 
history is "transition." It is precisely that fact of a pas- 
sage from one strongly marked set of institutions to another 
that gives its stamp to the period. After Charlemagne, how- 
ever, the new institutions, feudal society, the Roman church 
system, the theological control of learning, have so plainly 



JPREFACE. vii 

gained upon the declining institutions oi ancient Rome, that 
we are really in a new Europe. These institutions go on 
developing, until once more, at about the middle of the 
thirteenth century, we are conscious of great and decisive 
changes going on, and by 1300 Europe is well on its way 
to another complete revolution in its methods of life and 
thought. Between these two periods of transition, then, lies 
clearly outlined a space of about five hundred years, which, 
if ever that could be said of any period, has a strongly 
marked character, almost a personality of its own. One 
feels one's self in the midst of institutions which, while 
they are continually changing and shifting, as human affairs 
must always do, are yet during this period comparatively 
steady and uniform. The term "mediaeval" as applied to 
these institutions may be defined with considerable accuracy. 
If within these limits we speak of mediaeval art, letters, law, 
theology, we know what we mean, and thus our whole study 
acquires a unity of view and purpose. 

These are the considerations which have determined the 
limits of the present volume. The point of beginning is 
very clear ; the death of Charlemagne marks a distinct 
crisis in the affairs of all Europe. The other limit is less 
clearly marked ; the stream of history widens continually 
as it moves from the great single empire of Charlemagne 
to the varied developments of national life in the several 
European countries. It is therefore impossible to name one 
point of time which would serve as a useful ending for all 
the lines of mediaeval progress. The papacy reaches its 
height with Innocent III (died 1216) ; the empire is a 
declared failure by the death of Frederic II in 1250; city- 
life, a distinctly modern social force, begins its political 
influence already in the twelfth century, and feudalism runs 
on, though with great limitations, far into the modern period. 
So again the progress of mediaeval civilization is very 



Vlll PKEFA CE. 

different in the different countries. Feudalism becomes per- 
fectl}/ organized in France while it is still on trial in Italy, 
and the cities of Italy are great political forces while those 
of Germany are just coming into conscious being. The 
closing limit of our period must therefore be a rather vague 
and variable line, ranging, according to the topic, from about 
1 200 to about 1300. ' 

Having thus fixed, according to a reasonable principle, the 
limits of the period, let us ask if we can define with any 
useful approach to accuracy the character which, we have 
said, underlies the justness of this periodization. All such 
generalizing is dangerous, but it may help us to comprehend 
the detail of our study, if we can see that the mediaeval 
period is one in which the great effort of human society is 
to fit itself to certain great abstract ideas and institutions. 
The peculiar thing about these is that they demand of 
the individual member of society that he shall, as far as 
possible, surrender himself to them and seek his highest 
usefulness by sinking his own personality in some form of 
corporate life. This absorption of the individual into the 
corporation is, let us not say the key to mediaeval life, for 
the human mystery is not so simple that any one key can 
unlock it, but, at all events, a useful and instructive guide 
to it. 

For example, the two great dominant ideas of a world- 
empire and a world-church are pure abstractions without any 
hold whatever upon the solid ground of experience, and yet 
they succeed, during much of our period, in obscuring all 
the other and more natural forms of human association. 
So law, both public and private, was, during this time, not 
the product of individual legislative thought or action, but 
purely the outgrowth of tradition, stronger than any existing 
legislative authority. So learning, of all things, one would 
say, most dependent upon individuality, was forced into a 



PRE FA CE. ix 

narrow channel by the great reUgious institution which 
controlled it. So literature, tied to a foreign tongue and 
frowned upon by the rulers of the world's thought, stam- 
mered and struggled for utterance, until, with the coming of 
a new time, it found expression once more through a great 
series of mighty individuals. Art, wholly devoted to the 
service of religion, came to despise the technical skill of the 
single artist and produced its effects, magnificent as these 
are, by a splendid exhibition of corporate energy, in which 
we lose sight of individuals entirely. Morality, inseparably 
bound up with religious ideas, had for its prime object, not 
the highest development of the individual man, but rather 
the complete annihilation of all that makes him an indi- 
vidual. Whatever is natural to him, the desire for fame and 
wealth, ambition, love, joy in the life of nature, all this 
must be, not utilized to higher ends, but sacrificed. The 
ideal man of the Middle Ages is the monk. Finally social 
organization determines itself almost whollv without refer- 
ence to individual quality, along the lines of certain well- 
defined classes. The noble, the bourgeois, the peasant, 
each is above all things a member of his class and cannot, 
except under extraordinary conditions, pass beyond it. 
The only exception to this rule is the clergyman, who must, 
by the very nature of his order, have passed the barriers of 
a class to enter it. The clergy is the great levelling institu- 
tion of the Middle Ages, and yet, once in his order, the 
clergyman is bound more rigidly than any one else to sink 
his individuality in the interests of his class. 

The exceptional difficulty of mediaeval study is largely 
owing to the very great difference between this society and 
any with \^hich we are familiar. The very terms of the 
historical record, king, lord, vassal, corporation, constitu- 
tion, town, council, governor, judge, tax-payer, army, are 
utterly meaningless until we re-cast them into mediaeval 



X PREFACE. 

shape. Kings without a country, rulers without authority, 
clergymen without religious character, laws without a 
sanction, privileges without rights are among the most 
common of mediaeval phenomena. It is the purpose 
of this book to bring out as clearly as may be some of 
the actual moving forces of this very complicated age. 

Geographically it is confined to the continent, and there 
the weight of the narrative portion is given to the countries 
included under the active administration of the Empire. 
Only in the chapters on the peculiar mediaeval institutions 
have the conditions in France been made the starting-point, 
because France is the country in which the growth of these 
institutions can best be studied. The great amount of 
space given to the Empire is chiefly due to the absence of 
useful books in English on that subject. 

A word must be added to the already too voluminous 
literature on the best way of writing mediaeval proper 
names. Since Freeman began to vex the world with 
" correct " spelling of familiar words, it has become almost 
a crime to write any word as our fathers wrote it. It has 
been deemed an evidence of almost barbaric ignorance to 
say "Charlemagne" or "Cologne" or "Louis" or "The 
Middle Ages." One writer after another has put forth a 
system which should have at least the merit of consistency, 
but the results have generally been distressing. I have 
frankly given up from the start any idea of being consistent 
in this matter. So far as I have followed any principle it 
has been to use the form which seemed to me most likely 
to be familiar to my readers. Where too great a sacrifice of 
this principle was not involved I have given the ordinary 
German form to German names and the French form to 
French names and so forth ; but where any forms seemed 
to me sufficiently warranted by common English usage I 
have used those. For instance, I say Cologne, but I 



PRE FA CE. xi 

cannot bring myself to say Mayence or Mentz and I prefer 
Treves to Trier. I say Ludwig the German and Louis the 
Pious, but I cannot say Ludovico II, though he is identified 
with Italy. In short, I have tried to apply a rule which is 
based only on my own personal impression as to common 
English usage, and if my impression is different from that 
of others I see nothing for it but regretfully to differ still. 
The manuscript of these pages had the advantage of 
careful reading by my venerable teacher and colleague, the 
late Professor Henry Warren Torrey of Harvard Univer- 
sity, whose wide and exact knowledge was alwa3^s freely at 
the service of others. My thanks are due to Professors 
E. G. Bourne and H. E. Bourne of Western Reserve 
University and to Dr. Frank Zinkeisen for valuable help in 
reading the proof-sheets. More than to all others I am 
indebted to my colleague, Professor Charles Gross, for the 
unstinted generosity with which he has placed his learning 
and accuracy at my disposal. The merits of this volume 
are largely due to others; its faults are my own. 

E. E. 

Cambridc;e, 

August, 1894. 



CONTENTS. 



Bibliographical Introduction ...... 

CHAPTER 

I. The Formation of the European States 
II. The Roman Papacy during the Carolingian Period 
814-888 

III. Revival of the Roman Empire on a German Basis 

888-950 

IV. Degradation and Restoration of the Papacy 

900-963 

V. Europe at the Year 1000 . . . 

VI. The Empire at its Height 

VII. The Parties in the Great Struggle 

VIII. The Conflict of the Investiture. 1073-1122 

IX. The Hohenstaufen Policy in Germany and Italy 
II 25-11 90 _ . 

X. The Papal Triumph over Frederic II. 1197-1268 

XI. The Crusades. '^ 

XII. Growth of the French Monarchy . 

XIII. The Intellectual Life 

XIV. The Feudal Institutions ..... 
XV. Organization of the Middle and Lower Classes 

XVI. The Ecclesiastical System 

Index . 



PAGE 

xiii 



41 
89 

149 

210 
240 

270" 

357 
398 

434 

477 

509 

541 

593 



MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Map: Thk. Roman Empire of the German Nation af.out 

THE ^'EAR 1000 

Facsimile of a Document of Vow. Leo IX 

VuE Impfriai. Text of the Concordat of Worms, 1122 

Skals of IIohenstaufen Popes 

Map: The Crusades 

Plan of a Monastery 



149 
209 

269 

313 
357 
555 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 



The historical literature of the Middle Ages consists of 
a great variety of material of which, perhaps, the smallest 
part is what we ordinarily call narrative history. It is 
practically all in Latin and is almost without exception 
the work of clergymen. This has naturally given to it its 
distinctive character. It is a literature as far as possible 
from being "scientific"; it reflects in the clearest manner 
the tendency of the period to accept anything it hears and 
to be rather more inclined to accept it in proportion as it 
contains elements of the miraculous. Even those writers 
who declare most distinctly their purpose to tell only what 
they know, are likely in the next sentence to run off into the 
wildest tales of things which no human being can possibly 
know. 

It becomes therefore the problem of the mediaeval his- 
torian to select, not the authors whom he can trust, for he 
can trust none, but such parts of the story told by each as 
seem to rest upon a reasonable basis of human evidence. 
It is never possible to reject even the most absurd jumble of 
miracles, since mingled with them there may go a perfectly 
trustworthy presentation of historical facts. Indeed, such 
incredible tales are themselves valuable as giving us precious 
indications of the stage of culture and the habits of thought 
of the people with whom we are dealing. The impulse to 
historical recording and narrating keeps tolerably even 



xvi BIBLIO GRA PHICA L INTR OD UC TION. 

pace with the literary impulse in general. As civilization 
advances men begin to turn naturally to the pen to preserve 
for others the ideas which are taking shape in their own 
minds. One of the earliest instincts of literature is to make 
such a record of the doings of heroes as shall keep their 
names alive. This is not the historical instinct in its true 
form, but rather the desire to hold up great deeds to 
the emulation of posterity. Yet out of this instinct comes 
one of the most important contributions to history, the 
biographical. The true historical impulse is a desire that 
those who come after shall know just how things went on in 
our time, not for any purpose, but just simply from the love 
of truth. 

In the whole period of the Middle Ages the literary im- 
pulse is comparatively weak, and that for very evident 
reasons. Men were occupied with other things; with the 
making of states, the evolution of laws, the struggle for 
existence, the balancing of great unconscious social forces. 
Pure literature did not find the conditions of a vigorous life. 
So history suffered as well; it is marvelous to notice how 
curiously the historical impulse seems to take men just up 
to the point of really valuable and complete recording 
of events and there to leave them. We could easily under- 
stand that men should not write at all ; but it is hard to see 
why, having done so much, they should not do more and do 
it better. On the whole, there is throughout our period a 
gradual increase, both in the volume and in the quality of 
historical production. The time of Charlemagne is in some 
ways a real renaissance, that is, it shows plainly the turning 
of men directly to the original sources of classical literature 
for their examples in thought as well as in style. After 
that time there is an evident falling off and it is not until 
the tenth century that we perceive a new impulse which 
thenceforth is never lost. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCriON. xvii 

The forms of historical writing in our period are chiefly 
those ah-eady indicated in the earUer time. The most im- 
portant is the annaUstic, the formal recording of events year 
by year, with more or less of the individuality of the recorder. 
The term "annals" properly belongs to such records as 
were really made at the time the events occurred; where 
the actual writing down of the record takes place later, for 
a considerable period at once, though still preserving the 
annalistic form, the name " chronicle " is the more expres- 
sive. During the whole of our period this annalistic 
writing goes on with increasing diligence and volume. It is 
common to all the countries of Europe and does not vary 
much in character or merit. The prevailing quality of it is 
a concise directness of style and a selection of topics such 
as seemed to the writer most interesting. Usually the centre 
of his interest is the region in which he lives and items re- 
lating to his own monastery often take up space which we 
could wish were devoted to more widely important matters. 
The annals upon which we have to rely for the thread of 
narration in the several countries and periods will be briefly 
described in their proper connection. 

Another form of historical writing is the biography, and 
this appears in our period under various branches. The 
favorite subject of mediaeval biography is the saint. Almost 
all the leading personages in the religious world found 
biographers among their immediate followers, and wherever 
the lives of such men touch upon politics in its larger aspects, 
these accounts become valuable historical material. One 
learns to separate the mass of the legendary and the 
miraculous from the truly historical. Lay biographies are 
also not infrequent. Such sketches as the lives of Otto I, 
Conrad II, the Countess Matilda and Henry IV, give 
important contributions to history and are not wholly 
spoiled by the fulsome laudation common to most such 



xviii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

writing. The great religious controversy of the eleventh 
century brought forth a mass of literature of a polemic sort, 
in which the party attitude is most prominent and which has 
to be used with great caution. A typical book of this kind 
is Eruno's " History of the Saxon War." 

Another form of narrative, so frequent as to deserve a 
separate mention, is the so-called '' Trans/a tio, " that is, the 
account of the transfer of the bones of a saint from their 
original resting-place to the church of which they were to 
be the chief ornament and the most profitable investment. 
The primary object of these accounts is to establish the 
authenticity of the relics by means of the abundant miracles 
which they performed, but going along with these fables is 
frequently much that is historical, and often a gap in more 
regular histories is supplied from such a source. 

Far more important than all these, however, is the 
unconscious material of history in the form of official docu- 
ments of every sort. This material increases rapidly in our 
period with the increasing sense of the importance of docu- 
mentary evidence for the possession of land and of those 
manifold privileges which made up the sum of feudal rights. 
Where all society rested upon individual contracts, the 
making and preserving of such contracts was a matter of 
prime necessity. Modern historical study has concerned 
itself very largely with gathering and publishing this docu- 
mentary material and we have the results in vast collections 
accessible now to every scholar. By far the larger part of 
it rel tes to the property and the exemptions of religious 
houses. More documents of this kind have been pre- 
served, partly because of the greater security of the 
monasteries and partly because of the longer continuity of 
the religious corporation. Such a house as St. Martin's at 
Tours, for example, with a continuous existence of centuries, 
was like a fortress in the midst of a war-swept land. It 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xix 

stood there, while the families of the lay nobility in posses- 
sion about it were carried away by the accidents of human 
experience, firm in the regard of the community and able 
constantly to stretch out its clever hand and draw in a bit 
here and a bit there, never failing to fortify itself with a 
written document. In course of time its "cartulary," as 
the collection of documents was called, became a kind of 
written constitution, able to withstand all the aggressions of 
mediaeval opponents and only giving way when a changed 
conception of public right had put new weapons into the 
hands of the state. 

The student of mediaeval history who wishes to proceed 
scientifically, will make acquaintance first with certain 
indexes to the literature of his subject. The most compre- 
hensive of these is Potthast, Bibliotheca Historica Medii ^vi, 
2 vols., 1862-68, which gives in alphabetical order the titles 
of most mediaeval historical works, with a brief indication of 
their contents, the existing manuscripts and modern com- 
mentators upon them, together with a mass of other useful 
information. More recent is Chevalier, Repertoire des 
Sources Historiques du Moyen-Age, 1887-88, a general bibli- 
ography arranged alphabetically by authors. Dahlmann- 
Waitz, Qiiellenkunde der Deutschen Geschichte, 5th ed., 1883, 
is a handily arranged index of titles to all historical writing, 
contemporary and modern, about Germany and other coun- 
tries as related to Germany. Monod, Bibliographie de 
V Histoire de France, 1888, is an attempt at the same thing for 
France. W. Wattenbach, Deutschla7id^ s Geschichtsquelle?%im 
Mittelalter, 2 vols., 1873-74, carries us one step further. It 
is an attempt to give a connected survey of the progress of 
historical writing in Germany, with some account of the 
authors, their relation to the general state of literature and 
their claims to credit as historians. Nothing precisely like 
it exists, for other countries. Ebert, Geschichte der Literatur 



XX BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LVTRODUCTIOJV. 

im Mittelalte7% 3 vols., 1880-89, contains valuable notices of 
historical, in connection with other forms of literature. 

The texts of the historical writers of the Middle Ages 
have been published with great care and zeal during the last 
hundred, and more especially during the last fifty years in 
every European country. The earliest of the great col- 
lections is that of Muratori, Rei'inn Italicariwt Sc7'iJ?fores, in 
25 vols., fol., 1723-51. The next in order of time is that 
of Bouquet, Rermn Gallicarum et Fraiiciarimi Scriptores, in 
23 vols., fol., containing also many documents, letters, laws, 
etc. Then come the Mcmiunenta Germiifiice Histcwica, the 
first 24 volumes of which were edited in folio form by Georg 
Pertz, beginning in 1826. This colossal undertaking is still 
actively going on, the volumes now appearing chiefly in 
quarto form. It is divided into the several departments of 
scriptores, leges, diplo77iata, epistolcB and antiquitates. The 
principal mediaeval historians of Germany have also been 
reprinted in octavo form for the use of students from the 
texts of the Mojiiwieuta and many of them have been trans- 
lated into German under the general title GeschichtscJireibe?' 
der Deutscheji Vorzeit. For England we have the Rerum 
B^'itannicanim Medii j£vi Scriptot-es, published by the 
government and generally quoted as the " Rolls Series." 
Of course, many of the authors appear in more than one 
collection and many of those in the collection for one 
country are essential to the study of other countries. 

Along with these collections of authors have grown up 
also innumerable publications of documentary material, gen- 
erally gathering into one or more volumes those documents 
which relate to the history of a particular territory. The- 
use of such collections has been greatly facilitated by very 
complete descriptive indexes, called Regesta, as, for example, 
those of the imperial decrees edited by Bohmer and his suc- 
cessors, those of the popes by Jaffe, Potthast and others ; 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxi 

for France by Brequigny, for England in the Syllabus to 
Rymer's Foedera. In such publications one expects to find 
a critical account of the given document, especially in regard 
to its genuineness, a brief abstract of its contents and a 
reference to one or more places where it may be found. 

A vast literature of aids to the study of original materials, 
especially of documents, has also come into being, keeping 
pace with the output of material itself. The great dictionary 
of Du Cange, Glossarium medice et injimce latinitatis., in 7 vols., 
1840-50, and in a new but less valuable edition in ten 
volumes, 1883-87, is essential to a thorough study. Brinck- 
meier, Glossarmm diplomaticum, 2 vols, fob, 1856, gives most 
of the difficult words in both Latin and old German docu- 
ments. Oesterley, H., Historisch-geographisches Worterbuch 
des Deiitschen Mittelalters, 1883, gives first modern German 
names of places and then their various mediaeval forms. 
Mas-Latrie, Tresor de chroftologie, de rhistoi7'e^ et de geogra- 
phies 1889, is a storehouse of curious and exact learning 
on a multitude of points. 

Bresslau, Handbuch der U'rku?ide?ilehre, vol. i, 1889, is 
an elaborate description of the character, methods of prepa- 
ration, etc., of the public documents of Germany and Italy. 
Leist, U'?'ku7tde7tle/ij'e, 1882, is a primer of the science of 
documents. Prou, Manuel de Paleographie latme et f?'afi- 
^aise, 1890, gives very useful information to the beginner. 
Giry, A., Ma?iuel de Diplomatique^ diplomes et chartes, chro- 
Tiologie tech?tique, etc., 1894, is the latest word on the subject. 

The following are useful works for the study of documents 
and for bibliographical hints : — 

Sybel und SiCKEL, Kaiserurkunden in Abbildungen, 1880-91, gives 
photographic reproductions of imperial documents in the size of the 
original. The finest work yet done in this line, giving an absolutely 
perfect idea of the originals. A descriptive text accompanies the 
plates. 



xxii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Mathews, Shailer. Select Mediaeval Documents and other material 
illustrating the history of Church and Empire. 1892. 

Henderson, E. F. Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages. 
1892. A collection of leading documents without any one thread of 
connection, translated into English and arranged under several topical 
headings. The translation sometimes faulty. 

DoEBERL, M. Momnnenta Germaniae Selecta, 768-1250. Vols, iii and 
iv in one (i and ii not published). 1889-90. A selection of docu- 
ments for the Salian and Hohenstaufen periods, with considerable 
comment by the editor. Excellent. 

Altmann und Bernheim. Ausgewahlte Urkunden. 1891. Latin 
and old German documents illustrating the growth of the German 
constitution. 

Bresslau, H. Diplojnata centum hi usuni scholar iwi. 1872. A selec- 
tion of one hundred typical mediaeval documents to illustrate the 
study of diplomatics. 

Pflugk-Harttung, J. VON. Specimina selectfi chartarum pontifictim 
Roma7ioru77i. 3 pts. 1885-87. Very beautiful reproductions of papal 
charters, without attempt to give the precise appearance of the 
originals. 

Stumpf-Brentano, K. F. Die Reichskanzler. 3 vols. 1865-83. Vol. 
ii contains Kaiserregesten ; Vol. iii, Acta ifnperii, 919-1190. 

BoHMER, J. Fr. Regesta chrofiologico-diplo7?iatica regjirn atqiie impera- 
toruni Romanorum. ist ed. 1831-65. 2d ed. now in progress. 

Jaffe, Regesta pontifiaim Romanorum ad a. iigS, 2d ed. 188 1. 

PoTTHAST, A. Regesta pontificum Ro?na7ioru??i inde ab a. iigS, ad a. 
IJ04. 2 vols. 1874. 

Brequigny, L. G. O., de. Tables chronologiques des diplSmes, 
chartes &c. concernant I'histoire de France. 1769-1876. 

The following works will be of value to the student for 
the whole period : — 

Adams, G. B. Civilization during the Middle Ages. 1894. A useful 

and interesting study of the Middle Ages in their more extended 

meaning. 
DuRUY, V. The history of the Middle Ages, with notes by G. B. Adams. 

N. Y. 1 891. A handy manual, with the characteristic excellences 

and faults of the author. 
Myers, P. V. G. Outlines of Mediaeval and Modern History. 1886. 

A useful text-book covering a wide range of time. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxiii 

Hallam, Henry. View of the state of Europe in the Middle Ages, 
loth ed. N. Y. 1869. 3 vols. Same in one vol. N. Y. 1883. 
(Student Series.) May still be used, though with caution. 

Maitland, S. R. The Dark Ages. New ed. 1889. Essays. Written 
from a catholic point of view, in very warm, defense of the mediaeval 
spirit. 

Zeller, Jules. Entretiens sur I'histoire du Moyen Age. 2 pts. in 
4 vols. 1884-92. Readable essays on epochs of mediaeval history. 

Bryce, James. The Holy Roman Empire. N. Y. 1886. A study of 
the constitutional development of the mediaeval empire. The best 
thing in English upon the subject. 

HiMLY, A. Histoire de la Formation Territoriale des Etats de I'Europe 
Centrale. 2 vols. 1876. A summary of political development 
based upon geographical changes. 

Freeman, E. A. The Historical Geography of Europe. 1881. 

AssMANN, W. Geschichte des Mittelalters. 3 vols. 1875-90. Valu- 
able as giving a general survey of all Europe. 

Lacroix and Ser^. Le Moyen Age et la Renaissance. 5 vols., fol. 
A very beautifully illustrated work on all forms of mediaeval 
antiquities. 

Waitz, Georg. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. 8 vols. The clas- 
sical work on the German constitution ; vols, v-viii, deal specially 
with our period. 

Turner, S. E. A sketch of the Germanic Constitution. 1888. 

GiESEBRECHT, W. Geschichte der Deutschen Kaiserzeit. 5 vols, in 
7. 1881-90. The chief German narrative history of the imperial 
period from 900 to about 1180, — unfinished. Written strictly from 
the original sources, with warm patriotic German feeling. Inclined 
to magnify the personality of the Emperors. At times diffuse, but 
always interesting. 

Lamprecht, Karl. Deutsche Geschichte, vols, i, ii, iii, 1891-93, 
through the Hohenstaufen period. An original work aiming especially 
to bring out the economic aspect of political development. 

Hauck, a. Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands. 2 vols, and vol. iii, 
pt. I (1893), to the end of Otto Ill's reign. Valuable in every way. 

ScHULTE, J. F. Lehrbuch der Deutschen Reichs- und Rechtsgeschichte. 
4th ed. 1876. 

RiCHTER, G. Annalen der Deutschen Geschichte. 3 vols., to 1056. 
1873-90. An indispensable aid to the modern student; a review 
of German history in annalistic form, with very complete critical and 
bibliographical notes. 



xxiv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. 

Zeller, Jules. Histoire d'Allemagne. 7 vols. 1S72-91. The best 

history of Germany by a Frenchman. 
Zeller, Jules. Histoire resumee de I'Allemagne et de I'Empire 

Germanique au moyen age. 1889. 
Rambaud, a. Histoire de la civilisation Fran9aise. 2 vols. 18S5. 

Contains an excellent short sketch of feudalism and growth of 

monarchy. 
Allen, J. H. Christian History. Second Period. The Middle 

Age. 
Alzog, J. Manual of Universal Church History. Transl. from Ger- 
man. 3 vols. A frank Roman Catholic work, somewhat ultra- 

montanized by the translators. 
Baur, F. C. Geschichte der Christlichen Kirche. 5 vols. 1860-62. 

Represents the extreme so-called " historical " school of criticism ; 

of very great value. 
Blanc, P. S. abbe, Cours d'Histoire Ecclesiastique. 4 vols. A text- 
book for the Catholic seminaries in France. Extreme ultramontane 

tendency. 
Chastel, E. Histoire du Christianisme. 5 vols. 1881-83. ^ very 

carefully written book by a professor at Geneva. 
Bollinger, J. J. I. Kleinere Schriften. 1890. Beitrage zur Sekten- 

geschichte des Mittelalters. 2 vols. 1890. Represent the party within 

the Catholic Church known as the " Old Catholic." 
Fisher, G. P. History of the Christian Church. 1887 and seq. 
Gieseler, J. K. L. A Text-book of Church History. 5 vols. 1857- 

80. Transl. from German. A brief text with elaborate commentary, 

discussion of controverted points, and bibliography. 
Hase, K. Kirchengeschichte auf der Grundlage akademischer Vorle- 

sungen. 4 vols. 1885-92. The university lectures of the most popular 

German teacher of Church History in the last generation. 
Kurtz, J. H. Church History. 3 vols. 1889-90. Transl. from German. 

A convenient manual, sound and well arranged. 
Moller, W. History of the Christian Church. 3 vols. 1892-94. 

Transl. from German. The most recent German manual. Excellent. 
Neander, a. General History of the Christian Religion and Church. 

5 vols. 12 ed. 1 87 1. Transl. from German. The great work of the 

so-called " rational-supernatural " school. 
ScHAFF, Philip. History of the Christian Church, vols, i-iv, vi, vii. 

1882-92. A useful book for students, written from the point of view 

of the special divine quality of Christianity. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION. xxv 

MiLMAN, H. H. History of Latin Christianity. 8 vols, i8So. More 
nearly than any other work this "covers " the subjects of the present 
volume. It rests upon careful study often obscured by a diffuse, 
Gibbonized style. 

Schmidt, Ch, Precis de I'histoire de I'Eglise d'Occident pendant le 
moyen age. 1885. 

Greenwood, Thomas. Cathedra Petri. A political history of the 
great Latin patriarchate. 6 vols. 1856-72. Extreme anti-Roman 
view, but valuable for careful examination of documentary evidence. 

Reichel, O. J. The See of Rome in the Middle Ages. 1870. 

Freytag, G. Bilder aus der Deutschen Vergangenheit. Aus dem 
Mittelalter, 1873 5 ^om Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, 1867. 

Henderson, E;. F. A History of Germany in the Middle Ages, 1894. 



MEDIAEVAL EUROPE. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. 

814-888. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Boretius, A. Capitularia 7-t'guni Francorimi in Monnnienta Germafiice^ 

Leges., § ii. 
Codex Carolimis, Jaffe, Bibliotheca Rernvi Germanicarum, iv, i. A 

collection, made by Charlemagne's order, of letters written by popes 

to himself, his father and his grandfather. In connection with 

this edition also letters of Einhard, of Pope Leo III and of and to 

Charlemagne. 
Eginhardus, Qjluvres completes ; transl. with notes, ed. Teulet. 2 

vols., 1843. 
Eginhardus, Vita Caroli Magni, ed. A. Holder, 1882. — transl. 

Wm. Glaister, 1S77. — transl. S. E. Turner. Harpers' Half-hour 

Series. 
Annates Lata-is senses., 741-829. Mon. Germ, i, 134, so-called because 

the oldest manuscript was found in the monastery of Lorsch, but 

believed to have a semi-official character. 
Aiuiales Einhardi, 796-829. M. G. i, 124, probably a revised version of 

the A. Laurissenses. 
Monachiis Sangallensis de gestis Karoli Magni. M. G. ii and Jaffe, 

BibL Rer. Germ. ii. 
Theganus, Vita Hhidowici. M. G. ii. — Anonymi {Astronomi), Vita 

Hludovici. M. G. ii. — Ermoldus Nigellus, In honorem Hludowici 

libri iv. M. G. ii, and in Poetce Latini Aievi Caroli^ii ii. Three lives 

of Louis the Pious, all in extreme partisan spirit. 



2 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. 

Aimalcs Fu/deiises, ■j^x-'SGt,. M. G. i. 

Amialcs Berti}iia)ii, by rrudentius of Troyes, 835-S61; by Tlincmar of 

Rheims, S61-8S2. M. G. i, and new ed. 8° by Waitz, 18S3. 
NiTHARDUS, Historianun libri IV. M. G. ii & 8° (2 ed. 1870) and ed. 

Holder, 1880. Valuable especially because written by a layman and 

a participant in the events he describes ; favorable to Charles the 

Bald. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Oman, Ch. Europe, 476-918. 1893. ^^ scholarly, though dryly con- 
ventional presentation of the period before the mediaeval. The last 
eight chapters cover the beginnings of our subject. 

Church, R. W. The l^eginning of the Middle Ages, new ed. 1SS7. A 
very neat, brief summary of European history to the end of the 
Carolingians. 

MoMKERT, J. I. A History of Charles the Great. 1888. A well- 

. written, scholarly study, with full references to literature and fair use 
of all published material. 

Vetault, a. Charlemagne. 1877. An elaborate volume, finely illus- 
trated, and with many careful studies of detail. 

Abel and Simson, Jahrbiicher des Frankischen Reichs unter Karl 
dem Grossen. 2 vols. 1880-83. 

Clemen, Paul. Die Portrjitdarstellungen Karls des Grossen. 1890. 

Simson, 13. Jahrbiicher des frankischen Reichs unter Ludwig dem 
Frommen. 1874-76. 

Himly, a. Wala et Louis le Debonnaire. 1849. -^^ study of the 
clerical reaction after the death of Charlemagne. 

Sickel, Th. Acta Carolinorum, 751-S40. 2 vols. 1S67. vol. i: Study 
of documents, vol. ii : Regesta and very elaborate notes. 

Dummler, Ernst. Geschichte des Ostfrankischen Reichs. 2 ed. 3 
vols, in 2. 1887-88. 

Paris, Gaston. Les plus anciens monuments de la langue fran9aise, 
1875 5 contains a facsimile of the Strassburg Oaths. 

Rettberg, Kircheng§schichte Deutschlands, 1846-48. Most important 
for origins. 



[Soo] EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 



The Empire of Charlemagne, the thieatre of our narrative, 

extended at the time of its greatest expansion from the 

river Ebro in Spain northward over all of what 

Territorial -^ ^^^ France, Bel2:ium and Holland to the 
Limits. ' * 

North Sea, from the Atlantic on the west to the 

Oder on the far northeast, and to that part of the Danube 

which flows directly southward on the far southeast, and 

from the Danish Eider on the north to the Italian Gari- 

gHano on the south. If we place one point <f out co.- 

passes on the city of Basel in Switzerland, we touch with 

the other pretty nearly these outermost limits. 

But the control of the Empire of the Franks over these 
widely-extended lands varied very much with their distance 
from the centre of authority and with the char- 
^ ^ °'' ^^ acter of their population. Along the whole 
eastern frontier stretched an enormous belt of 
territory occupied mainly by Slavonic, or at all events by 
non-Germanic peoi^les. The dread of Charlemagne's power, 
enforced by the maintenance of strong bodies of troops in 
their neighborhood, served to hold these peoples in a state 
of semi-dependence. From time to time they worried the 
frontier and were then forcibly reminded of their weakness ; 
but they did not in the strict sense form a part of the great 
empire. They were not Christian, they were not German : 
their law was not regarded as equally good with the 
Frankish. Their relation to the empire was rather that of 
subject peoples than that of membership in the body politic. 

If, then, we leave out these outlying districts, we shall 
find the eastern frontier of the Empire withdrawn by a very 
The True considerable distance. It will include a small 
Frontier: territory north of the lower Elbe, will run south- 
On the East. ^^^^^ ^i^^g ^j^^ middle Elbe and the Saale, will 

then follow the Danube valley toward the southeast far 



4 FORMATION OF THE EUROPE AX STATES. [800- 

enough to take in the Bavarian Ostmark, will then swing 
around to the southwest so as to include Carinthia and 
Carniola, and touch the Adriatic just east of the peninsula 
of Istria. This is the true frontier. It leaves out the 
country of the Wilzi and the Sorbi, Slavonic peoples on the 
northeast, and Bohemia, Moravia and Pannonia on the 
southeast, over all of which Charlemagne had a nominal 
control ; but it is of interest to us as being the great historic 
eastern border of Germany. During the whole of our 
present period it remained, with a slight general advance 
toward the east, the permanent line of division between 
German civilization and Slavonic or Tartar barbarism. We 
shall have little to say of events on this frontier, excepting 
as they reacted upon the fortunes of the central state. The 
highest interests of the empire did not lie toward the east, 
but rather toward the south and west ; but we can never 
lose out of sight that underneath all the more absorbing 
events of political life, there runs a steady current of effort 
to maintain this frontier intact and even, as opportunity 
offered, to push it gradually farther and farther back into 
the territory of the new peoples beyond. Indeed one of 
the most interesting episodes of mediaeval history is the 
slow but certain advance of Germanic civilization, and with 
it of Christianity, into these outlying regions. 

If we take up the frontier line once more at the peninsula 
of Istria, we shall find it running around the Adriatic coast 

as far as Ortona and then across Italy to near 
West ^ "^^ mouth of the Garigliano. Thence it passes 

again along the Mediterranean shore to near 
Barcelona, where it runs westward to the upper Ebro and 
so on northward to the southeast corner of the bay of 
Biscay, and then in an unbroken line along the Atlantic 
and the North Sea to the river Eider in Denmark. 

Within these limits the drama of mediaeval life was to 



8 1 4] EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE. 5 

be played. The population was divided by a vague line 
running, say, from the mouth of the river Seine 

Division of ^Q g^ggj ^^^ thence to the head of the Adriatic, 

Population. i. . . i . , n 

mto tWo great divisions, which we may well 

enough call, as they called themselves, the Romanic and 
the Teutonic, or German, If we compare this line with 
that of the Rhine and Danube, the ancient frontier of the 
Romans toward the Germans, we see how greatly, during 
the four hundred years before Charlemagne, the Germanic 
nationality had advanced upon the Romanic. Not only 
had new Germanic blood come into those middle regions 
between the earlier and the later lines where the popu- 
lation had always been largely tinctured with Germanic 
elements, but the whole region which had once been 
Roman had come under a new set of institutions, political, 
social, military and legal, whose o'rigin was in great measure 
' Germanic. 

The history of those four hundred years is the story of 

the movement of a number of German races from 
Movement 

of German their home in the northern plain of Europe on 
^^^^* to the lands formerly held by Rome, and of the 

final subjection of all those races on the continent under 
the political control of the Franks.-^ Spreading out from the 
ancient Prankish land along the Maas, Scheldt, Somme and 
lower Rhine, but not losing their hold upon it, the Franks 
had successively conquered their relatives on the east as 
far as Thuringia, the Alemanni on the upper Rhine and 
Danube, the Visigoths in southern Gaul, the Burgundians in 
the valleys of the Rhone and Saone, the Lombards in Italy, 
the Bavarians along the middle Danube and, finally, the 
Saxons and Frisians in the far north. 

The military genius and the administrative skill of Charle- 
magne had welded all these widely extended regions into a 

1 See Emerton's Introduction to the Study of the Middle x\ges. 



6 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [800- 

great compact territorial sovereignty, held together by com- 
munity of blood and religion. By a wonderful 
tive Policy exhibition of firmness and toleration he had left 
of Charie- t:o each of the constituent parts its local law and, 
so far as possible with safety to the state, its 
local administration, while at the same time he had been 
able to convince them that their best interests lay in keeping 
up the lirm alliance with the Frankish state which he had 
forced upon them by conquest. He had known when to 
stop in his great military career, had resisted all tempta- 
tions to become a universal conqueror and contented himself 
with securing the combination of all the Germanic races 
of the continent into a great Christian empire under Frank- 
ish leadership. Germanic nationality, the Christian religion 
according to Rome, and the leadership of the Franks, — 
these were the three bases upon which the Empire of 
Charlemagne rested. 

This empire forms the point of departure for all study 
of the Middle Ages, and we must therefore look at it a little 
more carefully. The formal origin of it was the corona- 
tion of Charlemagne as Emperor of the Romans in the 
year 800, by Pope Leo III, in the church of St. Peter at 
Rome. It is a much disputed question, just how this corona- 
tion affected Charlemagne's right to the imperial 
tionofChar- name and power, — whether he was emperor be- 
emagne. cause the pope had crowned him, or whether the 
coronation by the pope simply gave a religious sanction to 
an act, which, as far as right was concerned, would have 
been just as valid without it. It has, of course, been for 
the interest of papal writers to make the rights of Charle- 
magne — and therefore of his successors — depend upon the 
papal sanction ; but if one judges from the actual events of 
his reign, one must come to the conclusion that if the cor- 
onation had not taken place just when and just as it actually 



8 14] CHARLEMAGNKS ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM. 7 

did, it would have been carried out at some other time and 

in some other way. 

In other words, the power of Charlemagne was an imperial 

one long before he began to be called emperor. His con- 

. „ quest of all the Germanic nations of the conti- 

His Own ^ 

Understand- nent had made him more than a king of the 
ing: of it. Franks, and this increase of dignity and power 
was best expressed by a word which carried the imagina- 
tion of men back to the old Roman imperial dominion. 
That Charlemagne himself had no doubts whatever as to a 
distinction between his royal and his imperial position, all 
his acts after the year 8oo tend to prove. One of the 
earliest of his general laws provides that " every man in his 
whole realm, be he clergyman or layman, shall renew to 
him as emperor the vow of fidelity which he had previously 
taken to him as king," and that " those who have not as 
yet taken the former vow shall now do likewise, even down 
to boys of twelve years of age." ^ Indeed, the whole body 
of the imperial laws, directed to all the inhabitants of the 
empire, were expressly aimed at harmonizing local differ- 
ences and giving to every citizen of this vast region a sense 
of political unity with all the rest, and of immediate depend- 
ence upon the imperial authority at the centre. 

These general laws, the so-called " capitularies," were 

made public through the agency of the niissi do7)imici^ the 

king's messengers, who were sent out from the 

e"Missi emperor's court, and who had orders to see to it 
Dominici." ^ ' 

that the commands of the emperor were carried 
out in every particular. Minute regulations, which have 
been preserved to us, were given them, so that no function 
of government might be overlooked. Starting out in pairs, 
a bishop and "• count together, each pair moving within a 
prescribed '^ ^ highest agents of the imperial will 

'-'Ction, p. 219. 



8 FORMATION OF TIIF FUROPFAN STAFFS. [800- 

were bound by their oaths to see that the lesser otiicers, the 
local counts, did not fail of their duty. The opening words 
of the great general capitulary '^ de missis"' of the year 802 
are a noble statement of wise legislative and administrative 
purpose : 

The most serene and Christian lord, the Emperor Charles, has 

chosen from his nobles the wisest and most prudent, 

The Capitu- archbishops, venerable abbots and pious laymen, and 

lary * ' d6 

Missis." ^^"^^ ^^^^^ them out through all his realm, and has 

ordained through them to all his subjects to live 

according to the true law. And wherever anything is going on 

contrary to right and justice, he has ordered them to search this 

out diligently and mark it carefully, desiring by the help of God to 

set it right. And let no one, as many are wont to do, hinder the 

working of the written law by his own power or cunning, or try to 

seek justice for himself, either against the churches of God, or the 

poor, or widows and orphans, or against any Christian man. But 

let all, according to the command of God, live reasonably under 

just law, and let all by common consent abide each in his own 

function or profession, — let the canonical clergy observe the 

canonical life, free from concern with base lucre; let monks guard 

their life with diligent care ; let laymen live under their proper 

laws without fraud or malice ; let all dwell in perfect peace and 

charity one toward the other. 

And if any case arise which they (the ///issi) cannot, with the 

help of the local counts, correct and bring to due justice, let them 

without delay report it immediately to the emperor ; and let not 

the way of justice be disturbed by any one, either through the 

flattery or bribery of any man, or through the protection of any 

relative, or through iear of the powerful. 

It is clear that one purpose of Charlemagne was to build 
up a great centralized governmental machine, 

desh-edUnltv '^^'^^^^^ working should be regulated by the impe- 
rial will ; but it is equally clear that he did 

not aim to destroy the vigor of local institutic.ns. llis only 



8i4j CIIARLKMACNICS ADM/N/STRAT/VE SYSTEM. 9 

purpose was to secure the working of these institutions 
according to law and justice and the practice of the Chris- 
tian church. The emphasis laid upon the written law was 
meant to enforce the use of the capitularies and of the codi- 
fications of the old Germanic folk-laws as against any oral 
tradition whatever. It seems incredible that a man who 
had spent the best energies of a long life in building up this 
great administrative system should have taken so 

u neg ec e jj^^jg p^ins to make it permanent. He had done 
to secure it. ^ ^ 

what he could to secure the Frankish nation 
against the countless ills which under preceding kings had 
followed upon the division of power among sons. He must 
have known from the pages of Gregory of Tours, if in no 
other way, what a terrible ourse the principle of division had 
been in the past, and yet he was not capable of rising 
superior to a tradition so full of evil omen for the future of 
his race. He gave his sanction to the continuance of a 
practice which had proved fatal to the best interests of the 
P>ankish people. 

He had been emperor but six years when he put into 
written form a division of the empire between his three sons. 

These sons were already serving as his govern- 
of806^^^ ors, with the title of "king," in various parts of 

his wide dominion. The annals give as his 
motive ^ " that each might know wliich part he was to admin- 
ister if he should survive the father," and in the beginning 
of the decree of division we read " that each, content with 
his own portion, according as we have established it, may by 
the help of God the better defend the boundaries of the 
kingdom where they touch upon men of another race, and 
may preserve peace and love with his brothers." Evidently 
his fear was that worse evils would follow an attempt to 
make one son superior to another, than if he should antici- 

^ Annals of lunliard, ann. 806. 



10 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [806 

pate their ambition by giving them each a share in advance. 
To Louis, the youngest son, who had for some time been 
governing in southern Gaul, he gave Aquitaine, Gascony, 
Septimania, Provence and a great part of Burgundy. Pip- 
pin, the second son, was to have Italy, Bavaria, Alemannia 
south of the Danube and a great part of the Alpine 
country. The oldest son Charles received all the rest, that 
is, the old Prankish territory of Neustria and Austrasia, 
with the eastern Frankland, Thuringia, Saxony and Frisia. 
His share was the largest and the most important, but 
otherwise he was not distinguished. above his brothers. 

The decree of division ^ goes on to define the relations of 
the brothers to each other. 'Phey are to stand by one 
another in all cases af need and for this purpose 
lations of Charles is to have the valley of Aosta and Louis 
e Sons. ^j^g valley of Susa as an easy means of approach 
to Italy, while Pippin can get out of Italy by the Bavarian 
Alps and Chur. Each brother is to respect the borders of 
the others, to refrain from any interference in their affairs 
and bear them aid to the best of his ability, whether against 
foreign or domestic enemies. Further clauses regulate com- 
merce between the divisions, the rights of fugitives from 
justice, the legal status of vassals and numerous other 
matters which seemed likely to cause misunderstandings. 

" If any legal suit or disagreement or controversy in 

regard to the boundaries shall arise between the divisions, 

which cannot be settled by the evidence of 

e emen human witnesses, we desire that the will of 
of Disputes. ' 

God and the truth of the case be ascertained 
by the judgment of the cross,^ and that never in such a 

1 Divisio regnoruni, 806, Feb. 6. Boretius, Capit. 7-eg. francorum , i, 126. 

2 A form of the ordeal according to which the parties in a suit stood, 
each with arms outstretched against a cross, while prayers were said. 
The party whose arms first fell from exhaustion was bound to prove 
his suit. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii, 418. 



8o6] FIRST DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE. 11 

case shall any form whatever of duel or combat be resorted 
to. But if, which God forbid, any breach of these arrange- 
ments shall occur through ignorance or for any cause what- 
ever, we command that it be healed as rapidly as possible, 
lest by reason of delay a greater injury result." 

The final paragraph of this most interesting document is 
as follows : — " And all these arrangements we 

Purpose of j^^^^ made and established by a firm decree in 
the Division. ■' 

order that when it shall please the divine majesty 

to close our mortal life, our power, both the kingdom 

and the empire, may be preserved by God as it has been up 

to this time, in rule and in government and in all supremacy, 

both royal and imperial, and that our beloved sons may 

be obedient to us and that our people may be acceptable 

to God, in all submission, as a father may expect from 

his sons, and a king and emperor from his peoples. 

Amen." 

Throughout this carefully-worded document one feels 

the anxious dread of the aging emperor lest the fair 

political structure he had built up with such 

ang-ers o infinite pains should be ruined by the natural 
, Division. A ■> 

selfishness of men. Clearly he felt that the 
safety of the whole depended upon his keeping alive in 
his sons a strong sense of unity of interest, and yet he did 
everything to destroy that unity and supplied nothing, 
except fervent exhortations, to maintain it. In the first 
place the mere fact of division was a peril to unity of 
action or of feeling, yet in making a division Charlemagne 
was doubtless urged on by an old Germanic tradition too 
powerful to be resisted. Then, if we examine the lines of 

partition we see that they were drawn without 
Basis^ ^^^ reference to any permanent sources of political 

strength. No one of the brothers had under 
him a compact and homogeneous population, which might 



12 FORMATION OF THF EUROPEAN STATES. [So6- 

have given promise of a continuous political development 

within its own limits. Consider, for example, how full of 

occasions for misunderstanding was the border-line which 

separated the territory of Pippin from that of his brothers. 

It followed no natural lines, either of surface formation or 

of race distinction ; it included populations, for example 

those of Bavaria and of middle Italy, which had absolutely 

no traditions of any sort to bind them together. 

Finally, the Act of Division of 806 omitted altogether 

any reference to the one political idea which gave promise 

of being an effectual bar to these agencies of separation. 

The Empire is not mentioned, excepting indirectly in the 

concluding paragraph just quoted. One can draw from 

„ „ - this omission only two conclusions : either 

No Reference ^ 

to the Charlemagne thought of the imperial power 

™^^^^* as divided, just as the royal power was, or 

else he conceived it as something belonging to himself 
alone, and not to be handed on to his successors. It is 
hardly possible that he should have considered it as neces- 
sarily connected with one of his sons, without fixing by 
decree which one it was to be. 

The complications which this plan of division of 806 
must have produced were postponed to another generation 
H" t ■ ai ^^' "^^ death of the sons Charles and Pippin in 
Value of this the life-time of the father. The scheme, how- 
ivision. ever, is of permanent historical interest, as show- 
ing what Charlemagne's own view was — or was not — as to 
the continuance of his power. His great political wisdom 
in all other matters makes it not improbable that he believed 
the further maintenance of so enormous powers in one hand, 
especially in that of one among several brothers, would be 
against the best interest of the whole. Possible even that 
he let go the whole plan of an empire in order to preserve 
a substantial unity by a division of the parts. 



8 13] SUCCESSION OF LOUIS I. 13 

The death of the two elder sons, however, removed all 

anxiety on the score of rivalries, and seemed, by the very 

logic of events, to bring back the idea of the 

The Imperial J^^JyJpiJ-g once more into prominence. Pippin, who 
Idea again. ^ ^ r- r :■ 

died in 8io, left one son, Bernhard ; and Charles, 

who died in the next year, was never married. A clause in 

the decree of 8o6 shows that it was Charlemagne's intention 

that, if a grandson acceptable to the people should survive 

his father, he should succeed to all the father's rights, and 

in accordance with this principle, Bernhard was sent into 

Italy in 8i2 as king in his father's place. 

The final act of Charlemagne's life in reference to the 

succession was the solemn coronation of his only surviving 

son Louis as emperor. Louis's biop;rapher, 
Coronation ^ . 

of Louis as Theganus, describes the ceremony in detail, 
mperor. Charlemagne, broken with years and grief at the 
loss of his two sons and several other relatives, had brought 
the question of the succession before an assembly at 
Aachen in the spring of 813, and had received unanimous 
consent to the coronation of Louis. In the autumn he 
summoned his son to court, and on Sunday, the nth of 
September, proceeded in full imperial state with him to the 
church of St. Mary. There, after solemn prayer and an 
earnest exhortation to the son to fulfill his office as became 
the son of Charlemagne, he bade him take from the altar 
a golden crown and place it upon his head. So says 
Theganus, a contemporary and intimate associate of Louis. 
Other writers imply that the father placed the crown upon 
the son's head ; but in either case the point is the same. 
The coronation was 7iot by the pope of Rome, nor by any 
clergyman, a proof conclusive that the sanction of Rome 
was not needed to make the coronation or the acts of an 
emperor valid. Furthermore, there was, so far as we know, 
no protest against this ceremony, — and, on the other hand, 



14 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [814 

Louis was surely never wanting in due respect for both 

church and papacy. The simple fact was that at this 

time the close connection of empire and papacy was not 

yet established. 

Four months later, in January, 814, the aged emperor died, 

after ruling as king for forty-seven years, and as emperor 

for fourteen. By this event Louis, known to 
Succession ^ ' 

of Louis his contemporaries as '■'• Pius^'"' found himself 

e lous. without question sole ruler of the Franks and 
sole bearer of the imperial name. It seemed as if he had 
only to take up the burden of government where Charle- 
magne had laid it down, in order to continue the glorious 
career of his father. But between these two men there was 
all that difference which usually appears between one who 
has built up a power by pure force of character and one 
who has received it ready to his hand. True, political 
institutions have often proved stronger than the men who 
appeared to manage them, and have kept their force and 
influence long after they had passed into feeble hands ; 
such was the case with the institutions of Rome during the 
long period of her decline. 

The death of Charlemagne showed how far his institu- 
tions were from having the Roman solidity or permanence. 

Thev were largely the work of one man, or went 
Instability , / ^ ^ • , r , • 

ofCharie- back at most to one or two reigns before his. 

magne's T\l^ only way to preserve them was by keeping 

Institutions. j j tr ^ r- o 

up the sleepless energy which their founder had 

shown. The problem of the future was clearly this : Would 

Louis be the man to maintain this policy ? The forces of 

disunion were not wanting ; Charlemagne had kept them 

down with a strong hand, but would they now begin to act ? 

The history of the next generation is the answer to this 

question. 

Difficulties began almost as soon as the new reign began. 



8 1 4-] CLERICAL REACTION UNDER LOUIS I. 15 

Louis had never been intimately associated with his father 

^ . . in the general o-overnment. He had lived most 

Louis's ° ^ 

"Weakness of of his active life in Aquitaine and even there 
Character. j^^^ shown signs of that fatal weakness of char- 
acter which was to bring his kingdom to the verge of ruin. 
His trouble seems to have been, not lack of capacity — he 
had on the whole administered the affairs of Aquitaine well 
and had merited his father's praise for it, — but rather want 
of steadiness and persistency. He let himself be influ- 
enced, now by one party, now by another, until no party 
could depend upon him for a moment. The trait of pro- 
found religiousness which in Charlemagne had never stood 
in the way of prompt and vigorous action, took in Louis the 
form of a degrading and superstitious yielding to clerical 
influence. His gentle and charitable nature 

.}^. *' became the pliant material out of which un- 

hgiousness. ^ 

scrupulous advisers, lay and clerical, could make 
what they liked. In a crisis when institutions were unstable 
and personality was all-important, the personality of Louis 
failed to meet the great demands of, the time. 

To begin with, Louis was forced to face the same difficulty 
which had met every Frankish ruler from Clovis to Charle- 
Ouestion magne, how to arrange for the succession. He 

of the had three sons, Lothair, Pippin and Ludwig, all 

uccession. ^^ ^^ time of his accession in the full energy of 
youth and ready to put in their claims to a share in the 
power. There was no question of excluding them ; the 
only question was, how to regulate the division and how to 
provide for the future, so that the peace and unity of the 
ernpire might be preserved. 

The earliest acts of the new ruler show a decision and 
energy which seemed to promise the best results. He 
found the court suffering from the loose moral tone which 
Charlemagne had rather encouraged than repressed, and 



16 FORMA no A^ OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [816 

did his best to purify it. We have a remarkable document^ 

„ ^ in which he orders a careful examination of all 

Hasty- 
Attempts departments of the court and the removal of all 

at Reform disreputable persons. So far good ; but he seems 

to have gone on, moved by some unreasoning jealousy, to 

degrade and remove from influence all friends and advisers 

of his father. Thus at the very outset, by a display of 

misdirected energy, he raised a hostile party among the 

great Frankish aristocracy, which thenceforth never ceased 

to worry him. 

At the head of this party were the two brothers Adalhard 

and Wala, own cousins of Charlemagne, who had been 

amono^ his most trusted counselors, and who 
Create a . 

Party of were now deprived of their offices, and sent into 
Malcontents. ^ limited form of exile. The nephew Bernhard, 
Pippin's son, who, in accordance with Charlemagne's order 
had succeeded his father as king in Italy, was summoned 
to Aachen and, although allowed to return to Italy after 
taking the oath of vassalage to Louis, seems never to have 
had complete independence of action in Italy and within 
three years was led into that fatal revolt which has made 
him the most pathetic figure in our history. Three half- 
brothers, illegitimate sons of Charlemagne, were ordered 
into the immediate neighborhood of the new emperor and^ 
on reaching years of discretion were forced into the mo- 
nastic life. The same disposal was made of five sisters, 
who up to that time had shared the gay and slippery life 
of Charlemagne's court. These acts described, rightly no 
doubt, by Louis's biographer as evidence of his great 
piety, show how completely he was inclined to break with 
the traditions of the previous reign. 

Only on one point, and that the most fatal to himself, did 

1 Capitulare de disciplina palatii Aquisgranensis. Boretius, Captt. 
regnni francorum, I, 298. an. 820 (?). 



8 1 6] LOUIS I CROWiXED BY THE POPE. 17 

he follow the example of Charlemagne, He divided the 

administration with his sons. The oldest, Lothair, was put 

in charge of Bavaria, and the second. Pippin, of Aquitaine, 

though, probably, as yet' without the title of king. The 

youngest, Ludwig, was still too young for such service. 

The first two years of Louis's reign were mainly occupied 

with military operations on the frontier, and in establishing 

„ , ,. his connections with the various parts of the 

Relations ^ 

with the kingdom. From the year 8i6, however, events 
Papacy. crowded thick and fast upon each other, Louis's 

accession to the throne had taken place without any refer- 
ence to the papacy. It remained to be seen what view 
would be taken of this precedent, when an active pope, 
jealous of the Roman interest, should occupy the seat of 
Peter, On the other hand it was a question how the new 
empire would stand toward elections to the papacy, in 
short, which of these two great ideal powers would succeed 
in controlling the other. The pope, Leo III, who had 
crowned Charlemagne and allowed Louis to crown himself, 
died in 8i6 and was succeeded by Stephen V. His elec- 
tion took place without reference to the emperor, but he 
immediately sent to announce the event to Louis, and to 
inform him that he would at once cross the Alps for a visit 
to the Frankish court. 

Louis made every preparation to receive him in state at 
Rheims, and in less than tw^o months after his election 
Louis re- Stephen was on his way. Evidently nothing 
crowned by was more important to him than his relations 
^^^' with the Franks. The few days of his stay at 
Rheims were filled by almost uninterrupted negotiations, of 
which we have only meagre accounts, though it is clear that 
they were mainly concerned with the maintenance of papal 
rights in Italy through the Frankish alliance. The most 
important event of the week was the solemn re-coronation 



18 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [817 

of Louis by the pope with a crown which one writer assures 
us was the same which had once belonged to Constantine. 
The ancient church of St. Mary, where the ceremony was 
performed, was that in which the baptism of Clovis was said 
to have taken place. The full meaning of the act was that 
the successor of Clovis was also become the successor of 
Constantine. Our interest in it is with the question whether 
the imperial rights were in any way changed by it. Louis 
had signed himself emperor ever since his father's death, 
and would unquestionably have continued to do so if he had 
never received the papal sanction ; but at the same time he 
opened the way for an arrangement in favor of the papal 
right by permitting himself to be re-crowned — an argu- 
ment which the papal party did not fail promptly to make 
use of. 

Of far greater immediate importance were the doings of a 
great assembly at Aachen in the following year, of which we 
have very considerable records. The purpose of 
Reforms. the emperor was pretty thoroughly to overhaul 
^^^' the condition of the empire, and especially to 

provide for a complete and energetic reform of the 
monastic system as the great moral and social safeguard 
of his people. The discipline of the monasteries, their 
duties toward the government, the regulation of their vast 
properties were described in minute detail. A similar 
strictness dictated a series of laws in regard to the secular 
clergv. 

At this Diet of 817 was published also the second great 
division of the empire, which we have to study and to com- 
pare with that planned by Charlemagne in 806. 

^ili!!°" It will be remembered that Charlemagne had 

of 817. . 

made no mention whatever of the imperial power 
as such. Louis declares as the main motive of his act that 
^' it did not seem good to us nor to those whose opinion is 



8 1 7] SECOND DIVISION OF THE EMPIRE. 19 

most sound, that, through affection or favor toward our 

sons, the unity of the empire which has been preserved to 

us by God should be broken by the act of men, lest thereby 

a scandal to Holy Church might arise, and we might 

incur the wrath of Him in whose hand is the government 

of all kingdoms." Three days of fasting, almsgiving and 

prayer, caused the divine will to declare that the empire 

should pass to Lothair, and with the approval of " the 

people " he was crowned as colleague and future successor 

to his father. 

The other two sons were to hold the lands assigned them 

with the name and power of "kings," but ^'- sub seniore 

fratre.''' Pippin was to have Aquitaine, Gascony, the Mark 

of Toulouse, and a few estates in Burgundy. Ludwig 

received Bavaria with some neighboring territory. Lothair's 

part is not mentioned, but it was undoubtedly to be all the 

„ , ^. rest. So far as land was concerned, there was 

Relations ' 

of the Sons no pretense of equality among the brothers. By 
ouis. £^^ ^Yyq greater part of the Act of Division is 
taken up with careful regulations of the relation of the two 
young kings to the emperor. They were to manage local 
affairs in their own way, but in anything beyond the ordi- 
nary course of business they were to seek instruction from 
their elder brother. Once each year they were to visit his 
court and bring their gifts, which he, as the more powerful, 
was to repay in more liberal sort. They were to undertake 
g „ no wars against foreign enemies without his per- 

of the mission, nor to entertain ambassadors coming on 

any of the great questions of public policy. 
They must ask his approval of their marriage, and they 
were not to choose wives from foreign nations lest peace be 
thereby endangered. In the case of the death of one of 
the younger brothers after the father, his kingdom was not to 
be divided among his sons, but must be kept intact in the 



20 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [817- 

hands of one son whom the people might choose ; while if 
there should be no legitimate son, his kingdom was to revert 
to the eldest surviving brother, who was exhorted to deal 
gently with any illegitimate children. 

By this document Louis seemed to place himself squarely 
on the side of unity. The eldest son, Lothair, was clearly 

drawn to the same side, while Pippin and Lud- 
Sis p? °^ ^^^ might well feel themselves aggrieved both by 

the smallness of their shares and by their sub- 
jection to the elder brother. They were from the outset 
tempted to make common cause against him and their 
father, and to try to carry through a division which should 
recognize as that of 806 had done, the equal rights of all 
legitimate sons. This conflict between the idea of unity 
with subordinate parts on the one hand, and that of equal 
division on the other, gives the clue to the political entangle- 
ments of the next generation. The maintenance of the 
imperial idea was plainly to the advantage of the papacy, 
_. , and it is not improbable that high clerical inter- 

and against ests may have dictated the plan of 817. At all 
^^ ^' events we find the papal party pretty steadily on 

the side of Lothair, who represented the idea of unity. On 
the other hand the growing interests of the new nationalities 
were acting in favor of further division. The kingdoms of 
Pippin and Ludwig, though comparatively small in extent of 
territory, were each occupied by an ancient and tolerably 
uniform population, conscious of its political unity and 
ready, if its ruler could gain its attachment, to make his 
cause its own. Evidently the material for a very pretty 
fight was at hand. The warfare of these two ideas was 
kept up throughout the reign of Louis, until, just after his 
death, the bloody issue was fought out on the great field of 
Fontenay. 

The only mention of Italy in the partition of 817 occurs 



8 1 8] REVOLT OF BERNHARD IN ITALY. 21 

in a clause providing that that country should belong to 

Lothair "-per omnia,'" iust as it had belonged 
Revolt of ^ •' . . ® 

Bernhard. to Louis and to Charlemagne. This implied 
®'^* that Bernhard, if his rights were respected at all, 

was to be only a subject king, as the others were. The 
unfortunate youth, misled by evil counselors, rebelled 
against his uncle, precisely with what intent is doubtful ; 
but he was believed to be aiming at the very highest power 
and preparations were made accordingly. A considerable 
army of malcontents gathered under the banner of revolt, 
but there seems to have been no enthusiastic national 
support. The action of Bernhard cannot be thought of 
as a movement for Italian independence. Louis, with 
some reluctance, led a large army toward the south, and 
by promptly occupying the Alpine passes so demoralized 
the rebels that they surrendered without a bkw. Bernhard 
and many of his advisers were in the emperor's hands. In 
His Capture ^^ following spring their case was brought 
Trial, and before the Diet at Aachen, and a unanimous 
. * verdict of death was passed against them. 
This comparativel}^ merciful judgment was mitigated by the 
emperor to that of blinding, and, if we may believe several 
records of the time, this punishment was inflicted with great 
promptness and with such barbarity that the young king 
died two days afterward from its effects. Later legend has 
adorned these meagre records with a shimmer of romance, 
in which Bernhard appears as the victim of a cruel despot, 
urged on to his horrid deeds by the jealousy of his wife, lest 
her eldest-born might be robbed of a portion of his due. 

The development of new states within the great Frankish 

Attempts empire can be most instructively followed by 

at Division, tracing the various divisions and attempts at 

division during the reign of Louis. No less than 

six times between the years 817 and 840 were the bound- 



22 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [829-. 

aries of the several kingdoms of the sons of Louis changed, 

either on paper or in reality. Our proof of an actual change 

of sovereignty in a given territory is the existence of public 

documents signed by one of the kings, and issued within that 

territory at a date later than that of the supposed change. 

Where such documents are wanting, we are often in doubt 

as to the precise limits of sovereignty at a given time. 

The first immediate cause of a new deal among the sons 

was the second marriage of the emperor, and the birth, 

„. ^, , in 82^, of a fourth son, the famous Charles 

Bir tn 01 ^ ' 

Charles the the Bald, the centre of, and the pretext for, 
a . 823. Yi\os>l of the political disturbances of the next 
twenty years. The second wife, Judith, belonged to the 
house of Welf (Guelf) in Bavaria, the same from which 
Queen Victoria traces her descent. She was a beau- 
tiful and clever woman, and, according to the chroniclers, 
was the mainspring of the conspiracies and combinations 
which the interests of her son called into action. The 
eldest brother, the junior emperor Lothair, came from Italy 
to act as godfather to the boy, and promised on oath to 
defend him in the possession of whatever grant of lands 
the father might see fit to make him. So, six years later, 
taking Lothair at his word, the emperor carved 
out of the eldest son's territory a goodly slice, 
the rich and populous duchy of Alemannia or Swabia, with 
Alsatia, Churrhaetia and part of Burgundy, and conferred 
it upon his latest-born. Meanwhile Lothair had had time 
to change his mind, and this loss of territory, joined with 
other causes of discontent, so embittered him against his 
father that the latter saw no way but to confine him tempo- 
rarily to Italy, and exclude him from a share in the imperial 
functions. With this exclusion vanishes, for the time, the 
essential element of the partition of 817, the supremacy of 
one brother over the others. 



833] PROGRESS OF CHARLES THE BALD. 23 

A formal expression of this change appears in an undated 

document belonging, perhaps, in the year 831. By this new 

plan Lothair was to be left in Italy, while the 

Division |. q£ ^Y\q empire was to be so divided that 

of 831 (?). ^ . ^ , . 

Pippin should have Gaul almost entire, Ludwig 

almost all Germany, and Charles a piece between, including 

most of Burgundy and a large wedge of territory cutting in 

between the lands of his brothers along the middle Rhine 

and the Moselle. This scheme seems to have been nearly 

a copy of that planned by Charlemagne in 806, and was 

certainly never carried out. It is of value as showing the 

increasing demands of the party of Charles the Bald, and as 

a link in the chain of developments by which the map of 

modern Europe was gradually traced. 

The ill-treatment of Lothair, with its apparent rejection 
of the principle of imperial unity, brought about a swift 
reaction. He found himself supported by the 
Division vast clerical interests of the empire and by the 

^ *^^' papacy, and put himself in open rebellion against 

his father. At first opposed by his brothers, he was soon 
joined by them, and after the shameful victory of the "Field 
of Lies," was able to force the imprisoned emperor into 
concessions which even the standards of the day found 
degrading. This of course brought with it the temporary 
ruin of the hopes of Judith and her son, and the third 
scheme of division in the year 833 was based upon the 
entire exclusion of Charles the Bald. Thus Ludwig got 
almost all the German-speaking races of the empire, 
Pippin all the western territories, and Lothair, probably, 
in addition to Italy, the middle -piece, especially the 
ancient Prankish land of Austrasia with Aachen as its 
capital. The map begins now to assume a more familiar 
shape. 

Again, however, success brought about a reaction. Within 



24 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [S40 

a year the emperor, released from his imprisonment, had 

gathered strength enough to make Lothair's 

for CMrleT* position untenable and force him to retire again 

to Italy. By 837 it had become possible to 

bring forward the claims of Charles once more. At a Diet 

at Aachen, with the approval of Pippin and of Ludwig, he 

was given an entirely new territory in the very heart of the 

best Frankish lands along the Maas and Seine, including 

Paris and the surrounding country. Only a year later, 

Ludwig, "the German," as we may now begin 

to call him, having meanwhile repented of his 

generosity toward Charles and begun negotiations with 

Lothair, was promptly cited to appear at a Diet at Nym- 

wegen and there deprived of pretty much the whole of his 

lands outside of Bavaria. Of these a considerable part, 

lying along the lower Seine, fell to Charles. 

In the course of this same year Pippin died, and, without 
regard to his two sons, the great territory of Aquitaine was 
added to Charles' possessions, and at the Diet 
Divisions ^^ Worms in 839 he was confirmed in the sover- 
eignty of the whole western half of the empire. 
The eastern half, exclusive of Bavaria, was given to Lothair. 
Ludwig, limited to Bavaria, at once declared himself in 
rebellion, and it was while on the way to oppose him that 
the aged emperor, overtaken by disease, closed his troubled 
life. 

The death of Louis the Pious was the signal for a general 
outburst of the warring interests, which, even in his lifetime, 
he had been able only to hold in a certain 
Louis 1 balance. In his last moments he had sent the 

imperial crown and other insignia of the empire 
to Lothair, as if returning once more to the idea of division 
under the overlordship of one brother, which had marked 
the partition of 817. Lothair set out at once from Italy to 



841] BATTLE OF FONTENAY. 25 

enforce his claims. Ludwig the German, prompt and active 
as usual, gathered what forces he could from the whole 
eastern part of the empire and hastened toward the central 
region of Franconia, where Lothair was expected. Charles, 
busied with a revolt of his nephew Pippin in Aquitaine, was 
able only to negotiate with both brothers. The promise of 
the future, the prestige of the imperial name, the support 
of the clergy, all seemed on the side of Lothair, but a fatal 
irresolution led him to avoid a decisive encounter. 

Ludwig and Charles, drawn ever closer by their common 
hostility to the imperial idea, profited by this delay and 
. - found themselves by the middle of the year 841, 
Fontenay. just twelve months after the death of Louis, 
^*^* in position to meet the claims of Lothair with 

decisive energy. The emperor had joined to himself the 
rebellious nephew Pippin of Aquitaine, and, relying upon 
this support, faced his brothers at the little town of Fon- 
tenay, near Auxerre, in lower Burgundy. If we may trust 
the historian Nithard, who was with the army of Charles, 
the allied brothers were anxious to avoid a battle, and sent 
repeated embassies to Lothair, begging him to abide by the 
decisions of Louis and leave them in peaceful possession 
of their lands, as their father had intended. But Lothair 
treated them with scorn, dallying with them only until 
Pippin arrived from Aquitaine, and then refusing even their 
proposition that they three should divide the kingdom, 
Lothair to have his choice of a portion. Upon this refusal 
the brothers answered, if he could find no better reply, they 
would, upon the following day, though sadly against their 
will, call upon the judgment of God. So on the morrow 
they met in battle, and Lothair was utterly beaten all along 
the line. 

The battle of Fontenay, described very briefly by Nithard, 
was felt by the men of that day to be decisive. It was not 



26 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAiV STATES. [S42 

merely a struggle of brother with brother, of Frank against 
Frank ; it was an episode in that greater con- 
Its Historical ^^-^^ Qf Roman with Teuton, which had been 
Importance. ' 

going on for nearly four hundred years. The 

forces of Ludwig, the main reliance of the younger brothers, 
were almost purely German ; the army of Lothair was made 
up of almost pure Romanic elements. Half unconsciously 
to themselves, these warring elements were bringing out 
into action the Spirit of Nationality. 

A most interesting proof of this semi-consciousness of 
national life is given by the events of the following year. 
_, The two younger brothers, drawn into a closer 

Strassburg- alliance by their success at arms, came together 
^ *' * at Strassburg and there made an agreement 
of mutual guaranty against the encroachments of Lothair. 
Here, for the first time, we have a distinct recognition of 
difference of race and language as a basis of political 
action among the Franks. The kings first addressed the 
"people," that is, the army, each in his own language, as 
follows : — 

How often, since the death of our father, Lothair has pursued 
my brother and myself and tried to destroy us, is known to you 
all. So, then, when neither brotherly love, nor Christian feeling, 
nor any reason whatever could bring about a peace between us 
upon fair conditions, we were at last compelled to bring the 
matter before God, determined to abide by whatever issue He 
might decree. And we, as you know, came off victorious ; but 
our brother was beaten, and with his followers got away, each as 
best he could. Then we, moved by brotherly love and having 
compassion on our Christian people, were not willing to pursue 
and destroy them ; but, still, as before, we begged that justice 
might be done to each. He, however, after all this, not content 
with the judgment of God, has not ceased to j^ursue me and my 
brother with hostile purpose, and to harass our peoples with fire, 
plunder, and murder. Wherefore we have been compelled to hold 



842] THE STRASSBURG OATHS. 11 

this meeting, and, since we feared that you miglit doubt whether 
our faith was fixed and our alliance secure, we have determined to 
make our oaths thereto in your presence. And we do this, not 
from any unfair greed, but in order that, if God, with your help, 
shall grant us peace, we may the better provide for the common 
welfare. But if, which God forbid, I shall dare to violate the 
oath which I shall swear to my brother, then I absolve each one 
of you from your allegiance and from the oath which you have 
sworn to me. 

Then Ludwig, being the elder, took oath in the lingua 
romana, as follows : — 

Pro Deo amur et pro christian poblo et nostro commun salva- 
ment, dist di in avant, in quant Deus savir et podir me dunat, si 
salvaraeio cist meon fradre Karlo et in adiudha et in cadhuna cosa, 
si cum om per dreit son fradra salvar dist, in o quid il mi altresi 
f azet ; et ab Ludher nul plaid numquam prindrai, qui meon vol 
cist meon fradre Karle in damno sit. 

After this, Charles repeated the same oath in the li?igua 
teudisca : — 

In Godes minna ind in.thes christianes folches in^ unser bedhero 
gealtnissi, fon thesemo clage frammordes, so fram so mir Got 
gewizci indi madh furgibit, so haldih tesan minan bruodher, soso 
man mit rehtu sinan bruodher seal, in thiu, thaz er mig sosoma 
duo ; indi mit Ludheren in nohheiniu thing ne gegango, the minan 
willon imo ce scadhen werhen. 

The translation of the oath is as follows : — 

For the love of God, and for the sake as well of our peoples 
as of ourselves, I promise that from this day forth, as God shall 
grant me wisdom and strength, I will treat this my brother as 
one's brother ought to be treated, provided that he shall do the 
same by me. And with Lothair I will not willingly enter into any 
dealings which may injure this my brother. 



28 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [843 

Then the followers of the kings took oath, each in his 

own language, that if their own king should violate his 

- , agreement, they would refuse to aid him against 

Importance s? ' j & 

of these the brother who should have kept his word. 

^ ^* These oaths, valuable to us as a proof of just 

how things stood between the rival kings in the year 842, 
have an especial value as the earliest specimens of the old- 
romance and the old-germanic languages. We see here the 
former just emerging from the ancient Latin and reminding 
us already of the later French, Spanish and Italian. We 
see the latter, without any admixture of the Latin, already 
so like the modern German, English and Dutch that one 
can read it without much difficulty. 

Strangely enough, the Strassburg oaths were kept, — 
long enough at least to prevent Lothair, who had not 

given up the contest after the battle of Fonte- 
Their Effect. ^ . . , . 

nay, irom gammg ground again, and to con- 
vince him that it would be better to divide than to lose all. 
Negotiations began once more, and the outcome of these 
was the Treaty of Verdun, one of the great landmarks in 
the growth of the European territories. 

The principle of division at Verdun is not essentially 
different from that at previous partitions, and the resem- 
blance to the plan of 817 is especially clear. 

Treaty Again we get no suggestion of any motive more 

Verdun. 843. ^ » »'=' -^ 

distinct than the desire of each participant to 
get as much as he could, with, however, an undercurrent 
of national feeling limiting action. The starting-point wa^ 
that already Italy, Aquitaine, and Bavaria had been for 
many years the centres of permanent governments, and 
were at the moment in the hands, respectively, of Lothair, 
Charles and Ludwig. Lothair, probably because he was 
emperor, seemed the proper person to hold the ancient 
centre of the Frankish territory, with Aachen as its cap- 



843] THE TREATY OF VERDUN. 29 

ital, and he had all along had a large personal following in 
Burgundy and Alsace. So it came about that 

Lotliair's j^^ ^^^ given a strip of land includinp^ Italy, the 
Portion ^ ^ o J ' 

whole Rhone valley up to just beyond Lyons, the 

valleys of the Moselle and the Maas and the mouths of the 

Maas and the Rhine, including Friesland in the far north. 

It needs but a glance at the map to show us how few 

of the elements of permanence this territory offered. Its 

.^^ ^^^ enormous length made it very difficult to defend; 
without the . . 

Elements of its inhabitants, of various stems, from Romans 
Permanence. ^^ Frisians, had neither common traditions nor 
a common language to hold them together, nor was there 
any common tie whatever to bind them to the person of 
their ruler. That Lothair, as is quite possible, should have 
chosen this unwieldy strip of land for himself, shows how 
far the governments of the ninth century were from relying 
upon those principles of allegiance which make the whole 
strength of a modern state. 

Ludwig the German added to his principal territory of 
Bavaria all the countries lying northward from the southern 

slope of the Alps, and eastward from the Rhine, 
theG^^^ excepting Friesland and a narrow strip on the 

eastern Rhine bank from the Frisian border up 
as far as Andernach. On the other hand, he received on 
the western bank the great dioceses of Mainz, Worms and 
Speyer, perhaps, as a chronicler quaintly says, '■'• propter vini 
copiaiiiT 

The western territories remained with Charles the Bald. 
They included Aquitaine, not as yet conquered from his 

rebellious iiephew Pippin, whose rights were 
the Bald passed over without a word, Gascony, Septi- 

mania or Gothia, the Spanish Mark, Burgundy 
westward from the Saone (the later Duchy of Burgundy), 
all Neustria, Brittany and Flanders. 



30 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [843 

The partition of 843 involved, so far as we know, 
nothing: new in the relations of the three brothers to 
each other. The theory of the empire was 
of the preserved, but the meaning of it disappeared. 

Brotiiers. There is no mention of any actual superiority 
of the emperor over his brothers, and there is nothing 
to show that the imperial name was anything but an 
empty title, a memory of something great which men could 
not quite let die, but which for a hundred years to come 
was to be powerless for good or evil. The real forces of 
those hundred years are to be sought for elsewhere. 

With the treaty of Verdun we get the outlines of a 

political division of Europe which was to last, in its main 

^ features, for a thousand years. The elements of 

Dangers ' ^ 

of Lothair's permanence were found, as one might have pre- 
* °°^' dieted, in the eastern and the western portions ; 
the germs of future difficulties were contained in that long 
middle strip lying between the great national territories, 
which from that day to this has never found itself per- 
manently associated with either, nor yet capable of develop- 
ing a national life of its own. The problem of Alsace- 
Lorraine to-day, the problem upon which the peace of 
Europe now seems to depend, is only the latest phase of a 
conflict which the sons of Louis the Pious, all unconsciously 
to themselves, were working out. 

From this year, 843, we may for the first time properly 

speak of a " Frante " and a "Germany," though more 

strictly correct political terms would still be the 

Lotharii ,, East-Frankish " and the " West-Frankish " 

Regrmim. 

kingdoms. For the middle kingdom there was 
no further designation than ^'■Lotharii regnum,^^ a term which, 
contracted into Lotharingia and limited to a fragment of 
the northern portion of the strip, remains there to this day. 
To get a clear idea of the future of this middle kingdom, 



8s5] FATE OF THE MIDDLE KINGDOM. 31 

we must follow its fortunes a little farther. 'I lie emperor 

Lothair died in 855, and left his kingdom to three sons, 

thus continuing the fatal principle of equal division which 

had already brought such untold misery upon the Frankish 

state. To his eldest son Louis, who had already been 

recognized by the papacy as king of Italy and as emperor, 

he gave Italy. To the second, Lothair, he gave the northern 

countries, Friesland, the lowlands of the Maas and Rhine, 

the Moselle valley and Alsace ; to the third son, Charles, 

the rest, /.<?., the valleys of the Rhone and Saone, which we 

may now describe as Provence and upper Burgundy. 

The chief interest of this division of 855 is in its effect 

upon the idea of the Empire. We have seen the imperial 

„^ ^ . title, joined to that of the sole Frankish kins:, 
The Empire ... 

confined to adding dignity and prestige to his position, and, 
Italy. supported by his actual power, a thing well 

worth the having. We have seen it again, shared and 
therefore diminished by Louis the Pious, but still, even in 
its decline, forming a rallying point for all those political 
forces which were trying to uphold the unity of the whole 
great Frankish state. At the treaty of Verdun the imperial 
idea seems to have had no influence whatever, except, per- 
haps, to determine Lothair's choice of a share ; — and now, 
in the hands of a mere Italian ruler, it has sunk to absolute 
insignificance. Louis II, son of Lothair, is the first in a 
series of shadow-emperors covering over a hundred years of 
incessant conflicts and political confusion, but with hardly 
more than a mere show of authority. 

Within the middle kingdom the process of breaking-up 
went on apace. Eight years after Lothair, died his youngest 
Partition of ^^^' Charles of Provence. The two elder sons, 
Meersen. Lothair II and Louis II, at once divided his 
territory, and, for a wonder, were not disturbed 
in this act by either uncle. Seven years later Lothair II 



32 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [875 

died without legitimate offspring, and this time the uncles 
were prompt and decided. Without regard to the "claims" 
of Louis II, the great kings of the East and the West 
divided the kingdom of Lothair between themselves. This 
was the famous Partition of Meersen, the last important act 
of the kind among the grandsons of Charlemagne. By it 
the middle kingdom was annihilated ; the lion's share fell to 
Ludwig the German, and thus, precisely one thousand years 
before the great war of 1870, was started that claim of 
Germany upon the Rhine and Moselle lands which has been 
to this day the most fruitful source of difficulties with her 
mighty neighbor on the west. It is worth noticing that the 
partition of Meersen was made on the basis of assigning to 
each kingdom first certain archbishoprics, then certain bish- 
oprics, then certain monasteries, and finally certain counties. 
It shows to what extent the idea of divided sovereignty, in 
other words, the feudal idea, had already taken the place of 
the ancient race idea as a basis of political life. The gov- 
ernment of a king was no longer over a given race, occupy- 
ing a given territory ; it was over a group of lesser sov- 
ereigns, lay and clerical, whose wavering allegiance had to 
be purchased by ever new concessions. The line between 
the east and west Frankish kingdoms corresponded fairly 
well with the border-lines of the new languages as we saw 
them in the Strassburg oaths, but it would probably be 
fanciful to suppose that this consideration had much to do 
with the settlement. 

If we were concerned only with the fortunes of kings and 
dynasties, the period from the treaty of Meersen to the 

revival of the empire by Otto I, would be one of 
Ftirther , , . . . , 

Dynastic and ^he least attractive, as it is one the most con- 
Territorial fusing in European history. Our purpose in 
Development. , i 

dealing with it will be to make clear the changes 

in territorial formation, and to gather into brief compass the 



877] BREAK-UP OF THE FRANKISII EMPIRE'. 33 

indications of future institutions as they develop in this 
distracted interval. As in fact territorial divisions were 
chiefly determined by dynastic interests, it will be necessary 
to trace briefly the decline of the Carolingian house in all 
three divisions of the empire. Ludwig the German lived 
six, and Charles the Bald seven years after the Partition of 
Meersen, both therefore surviving their nephew, the emperor 
Louis II, who died in Italy without sons in 875. The imperial 
title was won by Charles the Bald, through the 
favor of the pope, and the conflict with Ludwig 
the German, which would almost certainly have taken place, 
was averted by the death of the latter in the following year. 
Again a wretched division of the German lands among three 
sons, who, strangely enough, agreed to act together in main- 
taining one of their number in Italy as emperor, and in 
defending their common frontier toward the west. 

The brother selected, Karlmann, set out for Italy and 
actually seemed likely to win some success, especially as his 
Death of rival, Charles the Bald, frightened out of Italy, 

Charles the died on his way home. The pope, John VIII, 
however, showed great jealousy of the German 
influence in Italy, hastened up into France and crowned 
Louis the Stammerer, son of Charles, as king. If he had 
intended to make him emperor also, such intention was 
defeated by the death of this Louis a few months after, 
leaving two helpless sons to divide his kingdom again. 
The family of Charlemagne was dropping off at the rate of 
about one a year, wrecked in body as in character. 

The death of Louis the Stammerer interests us only as 
opening the way for the first break in the line of the Caro- 
Begmning ^ingian inheritance, and for the establishment of 
of New the first independent sovereignty within the 

mgdoms. x-^^^^y^^ of ^-j-^g empire of Charlemagne. The 
valleys of the Rhone and Saone had never been very firmly 



34 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [879- 

in hand under the CaroHngian kings, and now their time had 
come. The principal noble in the land, Count Boso of 
Vienne, aided by the pope and the local clergy, succeeded 
in gaining the support of the Provencal nobility, and was 
crowned King of Burgundy ^ at Lyons. His 
territory included the rich bishoprics of Lyons, 
Tarantaise, Aix, Aries and Besan^^on. His power rested 
not upon any principle of inheritance whatever, though his 
wife was the daughter of the emperor Louis H, and was said 
to have made life a burden to him until he promised to 
make her at least a queen. The papal sanction to this 
usurpation was given by the recognition of Aries as papal 
vicariate in the new kingdom. 

Meanwhile the live Carolingians, three in the east and 
two in the west, were going the way of all their house. For 
Momentar ^ moment the family seemed to enjoy a lucid 
Union of interval. Four out of live came to an agree- 

aro ingians. j^-^gj^^- ^^ unite in opposition to any further 
schemes like that of Boso, and they went so far as to put 
down an uprising of this sort in Lorraine, and to besiege 
Boso with some success in Vienne. At this moment the 
most active member of the combination, the East- Frank, 
Karl the Fat, succeeded in getting himself crowned em- 
peror in Italy, and at once all common action ceased. 
The West-Franks found their hands more than full with the 
assaults of the Northmen. Of the East-Franks the eldest, 
Karlmann, had died the previous year, and his 

880~882 

brother, Ludwig the Younger, followed him early 
in 882. Within a few months the one really heroic figure 
in this enfeebled generation, the West-Frank, Louis HI, 
victor over the Northmen at Saucourt, and the idol of his 

1 So says the chronicler Regino, but Boso's documents do not show 
this or any other territorial title. He may more properly be called 
King in Provence. 



885] UNION UNDER KARL THE EAT. 35 

followers, was mortally wounded by an accident while in the 
pursuit of an unlawful passion. His only brother, Carlo- 
man, survived him but two years, long enough to show that 
nothing was to be hoped for from him. He died from an 
accident while hunting. 

Thus by a series of mishaps the stage of politics was 
cleared of its leading actors. There was but one legitimate 
descendant of Charlemagne to whom the distracted empire 
could look with any prospect of help for the future. Karl 
the Fat, sole ruler of the East, crowned emperor by the 
pope in 88 1, was now (885) called upon by the nobles of the 
West to be their king as well, — a worthless personage, 

totally unfitted to meet the great demands of 
Karl the Fat , . . xt- • ■ ^ , • 1 

Sole Ruler l^is time. His immense empire, the same which 

of the Charlemap;ne had so successfully controlled, was 

Franks. , . * ^ / ^ , ' ^ 

to him a source of weakness rather than of 

strength. Its chief need was a ruler who should know 

how to gather its scattered forces into one great effort 

against the invading Northmen. Instead of this 

His 

Incapacity ^^ ^^^ S°^ ^ weak and cowardly invalid, incap- 
able of leadership in any sense. Nor was there 
any hope that descendants of his might bring security to the 
Frankish state. 

The final blow to the allegiance of his subjects was given 
by his shameful treaty with the Northmen in 886, whereby 
the heroic defense of Paris was thrown away 
Deposition. ^^*^ a free passage was opened to the invading 
swarms into the rich lands of upper Burgundy. 
No wonder that as soon as his nephew, Arnulf of Carinthia, 
bastard son of his brother Karlmann, raised the standard of 
revolt, the emperor was deserted by all those elements of 
his people who were looking for a vigorous leadership. 
Arnulf, a man in the prime of life, already known as a 
capable soldier, and supported by the nobility of Carinthia 



36 FOR MA 7^0 A' OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [888- 

and Bavaria, marched in the autumn of 887 into the very 

centre of the empire, and was received everywhere with the 

greatest enthusiasm. The emperor, coward to the end, 

deserted by his followers, begged only for a quiet place 

to die in and gave up. Arnulf, welcomed by all the 

,- ^. eastern stems, was declared Kins: of the Franks. 
Arnulf King ' =• 

of the Undoubtedly it was in the plan of Arnulf and his 

Franks. party that he should succeed his deposed uncle 

as king of all the Franks, but the time for such a kingship 
had passed forever. The principle of local independence, 
aided by the working of the feudal system of land-holding, 
had once for all got the better of the principle of political' 
unity. A multitude of new centres of power had been 
developed, one of which, Burgundy, we have already seen 
becoming the nucleus of an independent state. The fall of 
Karl the Fat was, as it were, a signal for all such centres of 
power to assert themselves. " While Arnulf was wasting his 
time," say the Annals of Fulda, " there grew up many little 
kings in Europe." 

We have to notice these little kingdoms only in so far as 
they illustrate the territorial development of the European 
states, and also the prevailing ideas about the 
^"Little i^-^gjg Qf political power. Down to the time of 
Arnulf we have seen the succession determined 
by inheritance, the sons following the father and dividing 
his power as they did his lands, like so much private 
property. The election of Arnulf was a return to the 
ancient Germanic principle of choosing a leader who seemed 
likely to be the best man. But if this principle of elec- 
tion was good for the whole, why not for the parts ? The 
example was followed. It will be borne in mind that for 
the present there was no emperor in the West. 

In Italy two princely families had long been leaders of 
the nobility, the Markgrafs of Friuli, and the Dukes of 



888] THE NEW KINGDOMS. 37 

Spoleto, both of Frankish descent. Berengar, head of the 

, ^^ „. family of Friuli, was first in the field and, sup- 
I. The King- -^ ' ^ 

dom of Italy, ported by the nobility and clergy of Lombardy, 
(a) Berengar. (^g^lared himself King of Italy. He was crowned 
at Pavia, the ancient seat of that Lombard kingdom, to 
which Charlemagne had put an end a hundred years before. 
Guido of Spoleto, called by a party of the West-Frankish 
nobility into Austrasia, had been declared king of the West- 
Franks, but was not able to maintain himself and returned 
to Italy, determined to be a king somewhere. He surprised 
Berengar at Verona and compelled him to a truce. Beren- 
gar was recognized as subject-king of Italy by Arnulf, but 
only a few weeks later was badly beaten by Guido in an all- 
day battle on the river Trebbia, and Guido was crowned 
King of Italy at Pavia. So Italy had two kings at once, 

neither of whom had power enough to control 
{h) Guido. . . . . ... 

the restless nobility within his limits. Guido 

was able, however, to bring such pressure to bear upon the 
papacy that he was crowned emperor at Rome two years 
after his election as king (891). 

In West-Frankland the same sort of thing was going on. 
Odo, Count of Paris, had made himself a hero in the North 
II The ^y splendid service in freeing Paris from the 

Kingdom Norman siege (886), and when Karl the Fat was 
ranee. ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ there was nothing to prevent him 
from setting himself up as a king. He found ready support 
and was able to get the better of the Italian Guido, who 
had, as we have seen, been called in by another faction. 
He maintained himself long in the North, but in Aquitaine 
his hold was slight. There ruled the duke Rainulf, and 
under his protection was a child, third son of Louis the 
Stammerer, passed over for the present, but destined, as 
Charles the Simple, to become a rallying point for new 
political combinations. 



38 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [888 

Between Italy and West-Frankland lay Provence, where 
the successful usurper Boso had died a few months before 
™ _, the deposition of Karl the Fat. His young 

Kingdom of son Louis had not been crowned by the nobles, 

rovence. |^^^^ ^^^^ been adopted by the emperor and 
recognized by him as lawful heir to the kingdom of 
Provence. 

King Boso had aimed at a union under his rule of all the 
Rhone and Saone valley, but only the southern part had 
actually been in his control. Now that his hand was gone, 
the northern portion, east of the Saone, with the Lake of 
Geneva nearly in the centre, including the Jura mountains 
and commanding the St. Bernard pass into Italy, saw its 
rv The opportunity and declared its independence. At 

Kingdom of the head of its nobility was a Guelf, - — Rudolf, 

urgnn y. Count and Abbot of St. Maurice, — upon whom 
the title " King of Burgundy " was conferred, and who 
seemed at first to have a fair chance of uniting with Upper 
Burgundy a great part of Lorraine. 

Thus, within a few months after the fall of Karl the 
Fat, we see the empire of Charlemagne broken up into 
Eie ti ^^"^ independent kingdoms, with the prospect 

versns "Le- of indefinite extension of such divisions. The 
gi macy. basis of power in each of these new govern- 
ments was the same — a free election by the leading clergy- 
men and laymen within the land itself. Without distinction 
of origin, whether Romanic or Germanic, the principle of 
inheritance of power was everywhere repudiated. The 
"legitimate" Karl the Fat had been deposed for inca- 
pacity. The "legitimate" infant, Charles the Simple, had 
been passed over. Not the bastard Carolingian blood 
of Arnulf, but his well-known character for bravery and 
his energetic pushing of his own cause, had secured his 
election. 



888] ELECTION VERSUS ^'LEGITIMACY:' 39 

Everywhere independent kingdoms, and yet everywhere 

still a lingering sense that each was only a part of the 

one great empire of Charlemagne. Berengar in 

dcUSc or ^ 

Frankish Italy, Louis in Provence, Rudolf m Burgundy, 
Unity. Qj^ -j^ Neustria, each and all sought and 

received the recognition of Arnulf as the final sanction of 
their claims, and this before Arnulf had formally received 
the imperial title at the hands of a pope. Indeed, it is 
worth noticing, that the coronation of Guido as emperor 
had no effect whatever upon Arnulf's relation to the " little 
kings." The thing they needed was not a barren title, but 
a central power, — strong, but not too strong, — to which 
they might appeal in case of need, but which should ordi- 
narily leave them to manage their own affairs. This 
conception of the empire was practically that of Arnulf, 
and it was by holding to it through temptations of many 
kinds that he and later German kings were able to main- 
tain an empire worth our serious study. For the moment 
the imperial crown, tossed about among petty claimants, 
disposed of through the fear or favor of a corrupt or 
imbecile papacy, may well be left oiut of our sight. 

This conflict between election and legitimacy is to continue 
during our whole period, and it furnishes one of the most 
useful threads for the study of mediaeval politics. When- 
ever, anywhere, we see a royal power gaining somewhat in 
influence, there we are sure to find it using the method of 
inheritance as a step toward further gains. Whenever we 
see the local elements in a state getting the better of the 
crown, we find, at each critical moment, the right of choice 
put forward as the best means of enforcing their demands. 
Especially is this true of the imperial power. Again and 
again a powerful family seemed on the verge of capturing 
the empire for itself, but it never got beyond the point of 
securing a single succession by getting a son acknowledged 



40 FORMATION OF THE EUROPEAN STATES. [888 

during a father's life-time. Whenever such a son was not 
forthcoming, the right of election asserted itself in the 
empire with unmistakable force, and it is always at such 
crises that the history of the elective principle may most 
clearly be studied. The preservation of the electoral right 
and its final concentration in the "electoral college" was 
one of the most important services of the mediaeval empire. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE ROMAN PAPACY DURING THE CAROLINGIAN 
PERIOD. 814-888. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Decretales pseudo-isidorianae. Best edition by Hinschius, 1863. Also 
in Migne, Fatrologia latiiia, vol. cxxx. 

Nicholas I. Epistolae et Decretales in Migne, Patrologia latina, vol. 
cxix. 

Watterich, J. M. Pontificum romanoru7n Vitae ab aeqiialihis con- 
scriptae. 872-1198. 2 vols. 1862. A selection from contempo- 
rary biographies of the popes, so arranged as to give a continuous 
account of the life of each. 

UCHESNE, L. l'Abbe. Libc}' Po7itificalis. Texte, introduction et 
ommentaire (to 1464). 2 vols. 4to. 1886-92. A collection of 
ontemporary biographies of popes. 

MODERN WORKS. 

LiTTLEDALE, R. F. The Petrine claims; a critical inquiry. 1889. 
SCHRORS, H. Hinkmar, Erzbischof von Rheims ; sein Leben und 

' 'ne Schriften. 1884. 
NooRDEN, K. VON. Hinkmar, Erzbischof von Rheims. 1863. 
Prichard, J. C. The Life and Times of Hincmar. 1849. 
Bollinger, J. J. I. von. Fables respecting the Popes in the Middle 

Ages. N. Y. 1872. Ed. by H. B. Smith. 
Langen, J. Geschichte der Romischen Kirche. 4 vols. 1881-93. 

An attempt to write the papal history solely from the original 

sources. 
V lEGOROVius, F. Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter. 4th ed. 

^ vols. 1893. A comprehensive history of Rome written from the 

loint of view of the city as the central feature, with especial reference 

o the evidence of monuments. 



42 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [-76S 

Reumont, a. Geschichte der Stadt Rom. 3 vols. 1867-70. Similar 
in purpose to Gregorovius, but taking in a wider range of time, and 
less popular in style. 

Dyer, T. H. The City of Rome to the end of the Middle Ages. 
2d ed. 1883. 

NiEHUES, B. Geschichte des Verhaltnisses zwischen Kaiserthum und 
Papstthum im Mittelalter. 2 vols. 2d ed. 1877-87. A review of 
the relations between the Empire and the see of Rome from the 
earliest times to the reign of Otto I. 

Baxmann, R. Die Politik der Papste von Gregor I bis auf Gregor 
VII. 2 vols. 1868-69. ^ careful study of the development of the 
papal policy. 

Hergenrother, J. Cardi7iaL Photius, Patriarch von Constanti- 
nople; sein Leben, seine Schriften und das Griechische Schisma. 
3 vols. 1867-69. 

During the Carolingian period the Roman Primacy was 

growing into the dominant institution it was to be for the 

next five hundred years. A very brief review of 

The Papacy a -^^ history to the death of Charlemagne will 
Development. -^ * 

prepare us to consider this remarkable develop- 
ment.^ The first point to be kept in mind is that here ivas a 
development and not something existing, as Roman Catholic 
writers would have us believe, from the beginning of Christi- 
anity. Doubtless from a very early period, say from about 
the year 200, the bishops of Rome began to feel their 
importance as heads of the principal church in the western 
world and to assert a kind of superiority over all other 
churches ; but this superiority was acknowledged nowhere 
in the East, and was admitted in the West only as a leader- 
ship of honor, not of authority. 

Doubtless again, the record of the Roman church as the 

defender of sound doctrine and of a wise and 
Value prudent discipline, was a most exceptionally 

honorable one. Especially when, after the divi- 
sion of the empire, the seat of government was removed 

1 See Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, Ch. ix. 



-768] BASIS OF THE PAPAL THEORY. 

from Rome, the bishop had endless opportunities of show- 
ing himself to be the only source of order and justice in a 
distracted community. But the Roman church was never 
satisfied with this sort of a claim upon the allegiance of 
mankind. All these services might conceivably be forgotten 
or not be needed in the future ; it was far safer to base the 
Roman claim upon some grand theory, independent of all 
actual service. 

This theory was found in the tradition of the founding of 
the church at Rome by the apostle Peter. If, as the Roman 

church maintained, Peter was the chief of the 
Th^ ^" ^^^ apostles, selected by the Master as one to have 

authority over all the rest ; if he received from 
Jesus a peculiarly pure and precious tradition ; if he founded 
the church of Rome and handed this tradition on to his 
successors, and if, finally, the possession of this tradition 
gave to that church the same kind of authority over other 
churches, which Peter had over the other apostles, — then 
there was a basis for this authority which could never be 
affected by any temporary conditions. It has always been, 
therefore, the great aim of the papacy to enforce and 

develop this Petrine argument. Bv the time of 

440-461. . 

the great bishop Leo I, it was accepted by pretty 
nearly every one in the western world. The Germanic 
invasions had broken up all those centres of local govern- 
ment which might have proved dangerous rivals to Rome. 
The Germanic nations themselves, Arian Christians as most 
of them were, had no new centres to form an effective 
opposition, and as, one after another, they gave up their 
Arianism, they turned naturally to Rome to receive the pure 
word of the orthodox tradition. 

By the year 600 we find the pope Gregory I in close 
relations with all parts of Europe and even persuading the 
pitiless Lombards, the bitterest political enemies of Rome, 



FAFACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN FERIOD. [-768 

to change their faith and accept the true doctrine at his 
hands. In the pontificate of Gregory we find 
e apac3' ^^ fairest ideal of the papacy. It appears as a 
beneficent, coordinating force within the church, 
guiding and controlling the lives of the clergy, regulating on 
large and intelligent principles nearly all the functions of 
the ecclesiastical body. Such a papacy as this, claiming no 
infallibility for itself, making no superhuman effort to crush 
all activity outside its own sphere, acknowledging the equal- 
ity of other apostolic foundations and joining with them in 
one supreme effort to promote the kingdom of Christ upon 
this earth, by means of a pure and devoted ministry, this 
kind of a papacy is something very different from that which 
finally fixed itself upon the church of the West during the 
period we are now to study. 

From Gregory to Charlemagne the outward history of the 
papacy consists in its struggle to maintain itself against the 

^ pressure of the Lombard. In this" unequal con- 

Danger ^ ^ 

from the flict its only proper defender was the Roman 

LomDards. empire, with its capital at Constantinople. Italy, 
lost to the eastern empire from 476 to 555, had been 
recovered by Justinian, and its affairs were administered by 
a governor called the " exarch," whose residence was at 
Ravenna. But government from Constantinople meant 
ruinous taxation without defense, and the inhabitants of 
Italy were hardly better off under Byzantine, than they 
would have been under Lombard oppression. The papacy, 
in despair, neglected by Constantinople and Ravenna, 
threatened with destruction by a complete circle of Lom- 
bard principalities, turned for aid to a new and untried 
source. 

The Franks, alone among the Germanic tribes of the con- 
tinent, had been converted directly to orthodox, Roman 
Christianity. Doubtless this was an accident, resulting 



-768] THE EARLY FRAArKISH CHURCH. 45 

from no deep-seated conviction as to doctrinal truth or 
error ; but, once committed to that cause, the 

The Franks Franks had remained true to it, and had used 

Catholic. it as their battle-cry on many a hard-fought field 
against those Arian heretics, who happened to 

hold vast and fertile lands, which might be so very useful 

to themselves. 

It would be hard to find in the life of the Frankish 

people, as told in the history of their bishop, Gregory of 

Tours, a contemporary of the Roman Gregory, 

Their evidence that Christianity had done much to 

"Chris- 

tianity." soften the manners or to touch the hearts of the 

nation at large. It is clear that this is a worse 
than barbaric society ; it is a society of barbarians suffering 
the first inevitable evils of contact with a civilization, the 
meaning of which they could not understand, and which 
offered them peculiar temptations. The history of the 
Merovingian Franks is one of the darkest chapters in the 
records of Europe. Its interest for us here is that through 
it all we see the gradual gain of the only agency by which 
the forces of civilization could be brought to triumph over 
the forces of barbarism, namely, the Christian Church. 

So it was that when the powerfuM^ulers of the house of 
Charlemagne, his father Pippin and his grandfather Charles 

Martel, came to rule the Franks, they found the 

A f^ A^ Christian organization well established and p:row- 
defend Rome. ^ ^ 

ing firmer every day; and so it was that when 
the Roman papacy, in deadly peril from the hated Lombard, 
deserted by its proper defenders, the emperor and the 
exarch, cast about for a champion, it turned naturally 
towards this new power rising steadily and rapidly in the 
West and begged for its support. 

Down to the time of Charles Martel the relations of the 
Frankish government with the papacy had been friendly but 



46 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PPZRIOD. [768-814 

not intimate. The Merovingian kings, in dealing with the 

church within their borders, had taken the same 

The Frankish ^^titiide towards it as that of the eastern em- 
Church. . . 

perors. They were, in all matters of admmistra- 

tion, heads of the church as well as of the state. In con- 
ference with the leading men of the nation, they regulated 
the affairs of church and state together, but it must be 
confessed that such regulation was intermittent and without 
definite system. The chief controlling agency in the Mero- 
vingian church was the local synod, a gathering of the clergy 
within a narrow district, but here again it would be in vain 
to look for system or regularity. The most that can be 
said of the church was that it did maintain itself on a level 
a little above that of the people about it, and that it carried 
over into a better time the germs of great moral forces which 
were then to make themselves felt. 

The beginnings of a really effective organization of the 

Frankish church are connected with the name of Boniface, 

just after the middle of the eighth century and 

Organized by -^^ ^^ ^^ time when the Roman papacy was 
Boniface. •' . 

beginning to look toward Frankland for its most 

sure reliance. The significant thing in Boniface's work of 
reorganizing and rein%^orating the Frankish church is that 
he carried it on as the avowed agent of Rome. His episco- 
pate of Mainz was of papal institution and his principles of 
organization were those of Rome as opposed to any others. 
The Frankish church had thus, by the time of Pippin, 
taken on a form which brought it naturally into closer and 

closer relations with the papacy, and just at the 
AlUanceof moment when the Lombard pressure in Italy 
with Papacy, was getting intolerable, a political motive came 

in to make a strict alliance desirable. Pippin, 
the major-domus, wished to become king ; the pope, in re- 
turn for the help he needed in Italy, gave his sanction to this 



768-814] CHARLEMAGNE AND THE PAPACY. ^^- "^^ 

usurpation. Pippin drove back the Lombards ; the pope" 
crowned him king of the Franks. Charlemagne, the greater 
son of Pippin, developed this relation into one of still 
closer intimacy. His whole career was one long service in 
the cause of organized Christianity ; his great conquests 
were made as much for the advancement of the church as 
for the spread of the Prankish power. His diets, no longer 
the ineffectual affairs of former reigns, were really great 
assemblies of the leading men in the state, and their decis- 
ions upon matters of church, as well as of state policy, are 
preserved to this day, as a really monumental instance of 
wise and vigorous legislation. 

Towards the papacy itself the attitude of Charlemagne 
was uniformly loyal and reverential. His documents are 

filled with expressions of devotion to the chair 
Charlemagne of St. Peter ; but this loyalty, this reverence, and 
Papacy. ^^^^ devotion had nothing of servility about them. 

Charlemagne was the servant of Christ and his 
Church, but he was not the slave of the pope at Rome. It 
is clear that he felt himself the head of the Prankish church, 
in all matters involving the principle of authority, and after 
he had been crowned emperor he transferred this same idea 
of headship to the whole empire. Whatever his language, 
his acts indicate that he thought of himself, in his relation 
to Rome, as the successor of Constantine. Rome was a 
bishopric within his dominions, just as Milan or Ravenna or 
Pavia was. Some temporal sovereign the bishop of Rome 
must have as well as any other bishop. Such a sovereign 
he had always had, in the person of the Roman emperor. 
Now that Charlemagne had become an emperor, who might, 
without too great a stretch of words call himself " Roman," 
it seemed quite in the order of things that he should claim 
and exercise the same functions toward the papacy which 
the great emperors of the early Christian time had, or might 



PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [768-888 

nave, exercised. These functions were, on the one hand 
protection, on the other hand control, more or less extensive 
as the case might be. The empire in the hands of the 
Byzantine rulers had almost entirely neglected its function 
of protection, and had exercised that of control only in a 
fitful way and sadly to the disadvantage of the papacy. The 
only thing the bishops of Rome could look for from Con- 
stantinople was that, if regarded at all, they might come to 
be drawn, as the patriarch of Constantinople was, into the 
furious quarrels of political and dogmatic questions which 
were constantly agitating the imperial court. 

Now Charlemagne had assumed the function of pro- 
tection ; how should he interpret the corresponding right to 
control t His own understanding of the case is 
should pretty clear. He believed himself entitled to a 

contro . measure of control; precisely what that measure 

should be, time would have to show. There is one important 
respect, often overlooked, in which the relation of the new 
empire toward the papacy differed from that of the old. 
The papacy had come into being within the authority of the 
ancient imperial institution, supported by its power and 
acknowledging its control. The new empire came into 
being on the basis of a society already acknowledging the 
papacy as the chief authority in religious matters, and it 
had even received from this papacy the religious sanction 
which seemed to give it its chief claim to existence. The 
act of coronation of Charlemagne contained within it the 
germs of political and religious problems which were to form 
the principal interest of mediaeval history. We can hardly 
get these problems too clearly before us at the outset of our 
study. 

The extreme papal view was that, as the new empire 
owed its existence to the coronation by the pope, the pope 
had therefore the right to dictate to the emperor as to his 



768-888] THREEFOLD FUNCTION OF THE PAPACY. 49 

conduct and policy, and furthermore, as the empire repre- 
sented the whole idea of temporal sovereignty. 
Opposing: so all temporal sovereigns, by whatever title they 
Views. might be known, were subject to the same dicta- 

tion. The spiritual was higher than the temporal ; therefore 
the spiritual might control the temporal in all respects. 
Opposed to this was the strict imperial view, that, as the 
emperor was the successor of those ancient rulers to whom 
the popes had always been subject, therefore he had the 
same right to control the pope which those ancient emperors 
had had. Evidently here is an absolute conflict. Either of 
these theories thoroughly carried out would have annihilated 
one or the other of the two great institutions. The battle 
was to be a long and a bitter one. The main issue was 
often obscured for long years together, only to flash out 
into new clearness when some turn in the political wheel 
brought it to the fore. 

It will perhaps help us to keep some degree of clearness 
in our study of these very complicated relations, if we re- 
Threefold member the several different functions which 
Function of were included in the idea of the papacy. It was, 
tlie Papacy. ^^^^^ ^j^^ bishopric of Rome. As such it stood 
towards the Roman community in the same relation which 
any other bishopric held towards its own com- 
of Rome!"*^ munity. Being bishop of Rome, the pope was 
properly elected by the clergy and people of 
Rome, and by no one else. If he had been merely bishop 
of Rome there would never have been any question as to 
the method of his election or as to the control of his actions. 
But he had become, secondly, the chief of the Roman 
2. Head of territory. Even as early as the time of Gregory 
Roman the Great, ^ can see very clearly the growth of 

a great landed power in the hands of the pope. 
These lands had come partly from gift, partly in other ways, 



50 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [768-888 

and were at that time widely scattered over Italy and even 
in the neighboring regions of Sicily, Illyria and Gaul. Their 
administration was in the hands of papal agents, and their 
revenues went, of course, to support the household of the 
pope in Rome. By the time of Charlemagne these church 
lands had become much increased and concentrated into a 
reasonably compact territory with the city of Rome as its 

centre. We may already begin to speak properly 
The Roman ^^ ^^^^ ''States of the Church." The right of 

the pope to these lands had been expressly con- 
firmed by Charlemagne, as indeed it had been already 
by Pippin. The pope was there sovereign, just as any 
temporal ruler was sovereign within his own territory. The 
papacy itself dated its claim to landed sovereignty in 
Italy from an alleged grant by Constantine to the bishop 
Silvester, but this grant, believed in by everybody down to 
the fifteenth century, was then shown to be a tolerably 
clumsy forgery. The real claim of the papacy to hold lands 
in sovereignty is to be found in these grants of the earliest 
Carolingians and in their recognition by later rulers of Italy. 
The papal state grew because there was no power whose 
immediate interest it was to check its growth. The grants 
of Charlemagne and Pippin made the most important ad- 
dition to this state by including all those lands on the 
Adriatic coast which had been in the hands of the exarch 
of Ravenna. This addition gave the papacy two masses 
of territory on opposite sides of the peninsula, united 
only by scattered bits of land between, and it was the 
object of papal ambition for many generations to develop 
the intervening possessions into a solid and compact 
holding. 

Then, in the third place, the papacy was the head of the 
whole Christian Church in the West. Of this fact there was 
not, and for centuries had not been, any question. The only 



768-888] CONFLICT OF PAPAL FUNCTIOA'S. 51 

differences of opinion were as to the meaning of this head- 
ship and what it impUed. In its highest concep- 
Church. tion it represented the pope as the successor of 

Universal. ^j^^ u prince of the Apostles," receiving from him, 
through the long line of his successors, the purest form of 
the Christian faith, and ready to instruct the rest of the 
world in the true meaning of that faith. It represented the 
pope of the moment as the natural result of a principle of 
divine selection by which the source of doctrine should 
always De preserved in its original purity. Viewed in this 
way, the papacy seemed to offer to the Christian world the 
kind of tribunal which any institution needs to give decis- 
ions in cases of controversy. 

This aspect of the papal function had been developed 
during the period of moral and intellectual confusion which 

^ , , followed upon the decline of Roman civilization 

Development ^ 

of Universal and the incoming of the Germanic peoples. The 
®^ ^ ^* world had recognized the claims of the papacy 
because it could not get on without it. For three hundred 
years before Charlemagne there had been no other source 
to which the west of Europe could turn for advice in 
religious matters. Acquiescence had developed into recog- 
nition, and repeated assertion had come to have the force of 
law. There were enough weak places in this relation. 
Where was the guarantee that the clergy and people of 
Rome would always have the wisdom to select the man who 
should be most capable of fulfilling the highest of earthly 
functions for the whole population of Europe? To say 
that Divine Providence would never desert his church 
was begging the question. Still, if the papacy had been 
willing to confine itself to this function of referee in moral 
and doctrinal matters, there can be no doubt whatever 
that there was room in Europe for just this particular 
service. 



52 PAPACY IN' THE CAROLIA'GIAN PERIOD. [768-814 

The trouble was that the three aspects of the papal 

institution would not keep themselves separate, A bishop 

- ,,. ^ , of Rome who was at the same time sovereiofn of 
Conflict of *=> 

the Three a state and the head of the Christian world 
Functions. yvlw^X constantly find himself in crises in which 
it was impossible to say which of these characters should 
prevail over the other two. If a pope represented ever so 
well the idea of a city bishopric, he mirht be the last person 
in the world to manage successfully the affairs of a com- 
plicated worldly state. If he were a capable man of affairs 
he might well be wanting in all those qualities which would 
have commended him to the Christian world as its infallible 
guide. Or, again, if he were a man deeply impressed with 
the universal character of the papacy and eager to enforce 
this he might well be indifferent to the special interests of 
the Roman state, and thus bring down upon himself the 
hostility of the ruling elements there. Such conflicts and 
contradictions as these were continually happening and they 
serve better than anything else to explain the most difficult 
chapters in the history of the mediaeval papacy. 

We shall have abundant instances of these complications, 
but it may be well to notice once more in advance one sub- 
ject which was to bring the several characters 
Right Papal ^£ ^^ papacy into conflict of tener, perhaps, than 
any other. In proportion as the scope of the 
papal action grew wider and wider, the question, who should 
elect the pope, became of interest to an ever widening group 
of peoples. As simple bishop of Rome, there could be no 
question on this point. The only proper electors were the 
clergy and people of the Roman diocese. But if he was to 
be also territorial lord over a widely-extended state, the 
local powers in this state were interested in the highest 
degree in having for their sovereign a man who should be 
favorable to their interests as well as those of the church 



814-824] EARLY CAROLINGIANS CONTROL PAPACY. 53 

proper. And still more, if this same person was to be the 
head of the church everywhere, it was important that the 
church everywhere should have something to say about his 
choice. We shall soon see that it was not long after the 
three functions of the papacy had become well defined 
before the conflict on this point broke out and it continued 
for centuries to be the root of most of the evils of the insti- 
tution. And this matter of choice was only one question 
out of many upon which similar conflicts might and did 
arise. 

So long as Charlemagne lived we see no indication of 
impatience on the part of the papacy at the very vigorous 
attitude assumed by the great emperor in the 
lingfians con- church affairs as well of the empire in general 
tro apacy. ^^ ^£ ^^ Frankish kingdom in particular. His 
hold upon all the elements of his very complicated state 
was too strong and his service had been too great to admit 
of any conflict. If the government of the empire had 
passed into equally strong hands there seems to be no 
reason why the relation of sovereignty thus established 
might not have been maintained. The relations of the 
papacy to Louis the Pious offer a good many puzzles to the 
historian. It is usually assumed that the interest of the 
papacy lay in maintaining the unity of the Frankish state ; 
but Louis, who, if anybody, represented the idea of unity, 
was never, after the very earliest years of his reign, in any 
active alliance with the papal party. It would seem as if the 
extravagant piety and devotion of the king ought especially 
to have commended him to the affection of the head of the 
church ; yet we find the* pope, in the hardest crises of 
his troubled career, taking active part against him and 
supporting his enemies, who had never given any indica- 
tion of more than the usual formal devotion to church 
interests. 



54 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [823 

The theory of the control of the empire over the papacy- 
was continued during the reign of Louis and was at several 

«,iu. ^ ^ , different times carried out into practice. For 
Tlus Control ^ 

shown at instance it is very clear that the popes of this 
Elections. \Xy(\^q_ regarded themselves as in some sense 
responsible to the emperor for the correctness of their elec- 
tion. It so happened that the pope, Leo III, who had 
crowned Charlemagne, survived him by two years, so that 
the question of a succession did not come up in the life- 
time of the great emperor, and we have no indication from 
him how he would have met such an emergency. Upon the 
death of Leo, the Romans, without waiting to ask the opinion 

of the emperor, elected a successor, Stephen IV. 
816-81? ' "^^ ^^ once called upon the people to renew 

their oath of fidelity to the emperor and set out 
himself for the North. At Rheims, the venerable metro- 
politan see of the Franks, he was received with all honors 
by Louis and confirmed in all the rights and titles of the 
former popes. In return for this he crowned and anointed 
the emperor, who, however, it must be remembered, had 
already, without papal coronation or unction, been perform- 
ing unquestioned the imperial functions. Thus far it is 
pretty clear that the upper hand was the emperor's, not the 
pope's. 

Pope Stephen lived but three months after his return to 
Rome, and again an election must take place. Again, even 

more hastily than before, the Romans elected 
ff^^jfj ^' and consecrated their man, this time a monk, 

Paschal I. Again, as quickly as possible, the 
newly elected pope sent a message — '■'• epistola excusatoria,^^ 
'■'■ epistola apologetica^'' the Frankish annals call it — to 
announce the election and to assure the emperor that it had 
taken place after the proper "canonical" fashion, "not 
through his own ambition or desire, but by the choice of 



824] ROME UNDER LOUIS I AND LOTHAIR. 55 

the clergy and the approval of the people." Again the 
emperor shows no resentment that the election had taken 
place without his participation ; he accepts the apology 
and sends the messenger loaded with gifts and bearing a 
renewed confirmation of the Roman privileges back to his 
master.^ 

That the empire, even in the person of the pious Louis, 
did not intend to give up its hold on Rome, is well shown 
by the events immediately following the division 
Emperor of 817. (See p. 18.) Lothair, the eldest son, 
Rome. w^'^ ^y "^^^ edict made his father's colleague in 

the empire and assumed at once the imperial 
name, though not until the year 825 do the imperial docu- 
ments bear the signatures of both father and son. In 823 
Lothair was sent as his father's representative to Rome. 
The pope Paschal heard of his approach and sent him a 
very urgent invitation to present himself before the papal 
throne to receive the coronation and unction, without which, 
in the papal theory, he could not yet properly call himself 
emperor. Lothair consented, and gave thus to the papacy 
the third opportunity to pose as the source of the highest 
earthly power. 

On the other hand a second visit of Lothair in the follow- 
ing year gives us the opportunity to see the imperial authority 
asserting itself in a very vigorous manner. The administra- 
tion of the government of Rome by Paschal had been, it 

iNot content with the actual favor shown by Louis to the church of 
Rome, later ages invented a document said to have been issued by him 
at this time (817), in which he gives to the papacy pretty much the 
whole of Southern Italy and the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and 
Sicily; in which he further grants to the Roman people the right to 
elect the pope without any previous consultation with the emperor. 
This document, believed to be a forgery of the nth century, was used 
after that time to support claims which really rested on quite other 
foundations. 



56 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [824 

would seem, rather too energetic. The papal justices had 

shown themselves far from worthy agents of the 

Confusion 1^^^ ^nd numerous disturbances had threatened 
in Roman . , . ^ . . . . 

Politics. the peace 01 the city. Complaints against the 

papal government were loud, and the emperor 
Louis had already taken steps towards an investigation, 
when the pope Paschal suddenly died. The occasion of a 
new election was a favorable one for the assertion of the 
imperial rights. The new pope, Eugenius, elected, as his 
two predecessors had been, without consulting the em- 
peror, sent at once to announce his election to Louis, who 
sent Lothair direct to Rome to regulate the affairs of 
the city. 

The result of this step is seen in the famous " Constitutio 
Lotharii" of 824. The purpose of this edict was to bring 

order into the confusion which had up to this 
The Roman • 1 i • i i , i • r i • 

Constitntion time prevailed in the legal relations of the in- 

of Lothair. habitants. It declared in the first place that 

824. 

every inhabitant of the Roman territory should 
publicly declare by what law he desired to live. This pro- 
vision, strange as it sounds to us moderns, accustomed to 
uniformity of law within a given territory, was only the 
formal expression of an idea of law familiar to all the 
Germanic peoples who were at that time settled on the lands 
of the great Roman Empire.^ According to this priYiciple a 
man was responsible for his actions only according to the 
kind of law under which he had been born, not according 
to that of the land within which he happened to be living. 

A man's law was a part of him, given to him by 

Germanic ^^ £^^ ^^ j^-^ y^^^ ^g ^ member of a race, and, 

Idea of Law. ' ' 

no matter under what government he might be 

living, it was the duty of that government to judge his acts 

according to his own law, not according to that of any 

1 See Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages, Chap. viii. 



824] THE '^ CONSTITUTION'' OF LOTHAIR. 57 

place. Indeed, from this Germanic point of view there was 
no such thing as the law of a place ; law was not territorial, 
but personal. The theory of the old Roman law was pre- 
cisely the opposite of this. Throughout all the vast Roman 
empire there was but one great body of law, to which all the 
inhabitants were subject, not because of any personal right, 
but because they were citizens of the one state. The 
conquest of the Roman states by Germanic peoples had 
brought the new idea of personality of law into prominence. 
Wherever the Germanic arms had gone, there this idea 
had gone with them, and thus Spain, Gaul, the greater part 
of Italy, and of course Germany proper, were familiar 
with it. 

Of all the territory of ancient Rome in the West, the city 
of Rome alone, together with all the lands which had been 
_ _ in the hands of the eastern empire down to 

preserved by their conquest by Charlemagne, had never been 
e urc . £^^ g^^y long time in the hands of a Germanic 
people. Here, therefore, had been the last stronghold of 
the ancient Roman law, though we cannot suppose that it 
was studied in the form of the codification of Justinian 
(between 530 and 540). Naturally, then, as the papacy 
had gone on developing a sovereignty over the Roman lands, 
it had done so on the basis of this old law, and had tried 
to enforce its principles in the administration of the city. 
That a movement for the reform of the papal administration 
should have begun with a distinct overturn of the very 
foundation principle of the Roman law, shows that there 
was a large element, even of the Roman population, which, 
being of foreign descent, felt itself aggrieved by being 
forced to accept a form of law hostile to their traditions and 
probably to their interests. The effect of this edict was 
not to change the law of Rome. On the contrary, the 
greater part of the inhabitants continued, doubtless, to live 



58 FAFACr IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [833 

under the ancient law ; the edict interests us as an attempt 
to assert the imperial rights even to the point of undermining 
the most ancient traditions of the holy city. We shall have 
occasion to return to this subject again at a similar crisis in 
Roman affairs about two hundred years later. 

As to the sovereignty in the Roman territory, the edict of 
Lothair declares that the pope is to be regarded as the law- 
ful executive power. The emperor is, however. 
Chief Execu- to be the highest court of appeal and the supreme 
tivemRome. g^a^j-fiian of order and regularity in government. 
Pope and emperor together are to appoint missi, who are 
to bring to the emperor every year a careful report of 
the doings of the papal officers. All complaints of bad 
administration are to be brought to the pope first, but if he 
cannot set things right he is to call upon the emperor, who 
shall then send his own commissioners to take the matter in 
hand. The people of Rome are expressly enjoined to give 
the pope their loyal obedience and above all things to place 
no hindrance in the way of a proper election. Of the rela- 
tion of the emperor to the papal election nothing was said ; 
only one writer says that the Romans took a solemn oath 
that no pope should be consecrated until he had received 
the approval of the emperor through his missus. At all 
events we have an express statement — in a Frankish writer, 
to be sure, — that at the election of Gregory IV in 827 "he 
was not ordained until the ambassador of the emperor had 
come to Rome and examined into the election by the people, 
of what sort it was." 

It was during the time of this pope Gregory that the 

papacy became entangled in the mazes of the Frankish 

political troubles we have already described. It 
Papacy in ^ ■' 

Frankish would be impossible to discover in the papal 
PoUtics action here any real principle whatever ; only 

this is clear, that from point to point we can see the claims 



833] THE PAPACY AND LOUIS'S SONS. 59 

of the papacy growing steadily and only waiting for a favor- 
able combination of circumstances to become embodied 
in a definite shape. The part played by Gregory IV 
in the interminable quarrels of Louis the Pious and his 
sons is rather that of a tool than of a leading personality. 
He was made use of by the junior emperor Lothair, to give 
weight to his party, and that party represented, as far as it 
represented anything, the hope of a united empire. The 
apparent aim of Lothair was to make effectual, even before 
his father's death, that clause in the partition of 817 by 
which he was to be the head of the Frankish state ; against 
this idea were arrayed, however, all the tenden- 

Represents ^-^g q£ ^^ time, which were distinctly favoring: 

no Pnnciple. ' J *=> 

every attempt to break up the great centres of 

government and replace them by many smaller ones. This 

much is reasonably clear ; but if we follow the pope in his 

expedition to Frankland in 833 in the train of Lothair, and 

read the history of the wretched doings there between the 

old emperor, the young one, the pope and the two younger 

sons of Louis, We are compelled to say that principles and 

theories were pretty well forgotten in an unholy scramble 

for lands. Lothair had taken the pope with him, not, so 

far as we can see, on the motion of Gregory himself, but 

as a mediator and to prevent the shedding of blood. Near 

Colmar in Alsace the old emperor with a considerable 

following was prepared to repel the expected assault of his 

allied sons by force of arms. He refused to listen to the 

mediation of the pope, resting upon what he called the 

justice of his cause. 

More effectual than any mediation was the activity of the 

The "Field ^g^^^s of Lothair, who succeeded in so working 

of Lies," upon the followers of Louis, that during the 

night, while all were expecting a combat on the 

following day, so many deserted to the opposite camp that 



60 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [844 

Louis saw the hopelessness of resistance. This wholesale 
desertion has gained for the place of the encampment the 
evil name of "the field of lies," — a true term enough, but 
hardly distinctive in the midst of a history which is filled 
with lying agreements, made only to be broken. This 
was a splendid opportunity for the head of Christendom 
to gain eternal renown by taking a bold stand and com- 
pelling men through the force of his spiritual power to 
acknowledge him as the divinely appointed mediator among 
kings. But the time for such action was not yet come, nor 
was the personality of Gregory such as to promise success. 
He returned to Rome shamed and disheartened at the part 
he had been compelled to play. The clergy of Frankland 
had given no doubtful signs of disapproval of his conduct, 
and there had even been talk of deposing him. 

The pontificate of Gregory IV lasted until 844, when the 
old emperor had already died and the treaty of Verdun had 

^.„ legralized the division of the Frankish kingdom. 
Papacy still ^ =• 

subject to His successor, Sergius, was elected and ordained 
e Empire, ^^ great haste, again without consulting the 
emperor and this in spite of the fundamental law of Lothair 
noticed above. (See p. 55.) This could not be passed over. 
Lothair at once ordered his son Louis, who was acting as 
king of Italy under his father's orders, to march with a 
strong force to Rome and demand explanations. Pope 
Sergius, making a virtue of necessity, sent out to receive 
him and gave him a gorgeous escort into the city, but 
refused to admit him into St. Peter's until he had given his 
word that he came with no intention of doing anything to 
the disadvantage of the papacy. The important point is, 
however, that Louis with his accompanying ofiicers entered 
into a regular investigation of the election of Sergius and 
pronounced himself satisfied with the result. The imperial 
authority had once more asserted itself in an unmistakable 



846] ROMAN VS. IMPERIAL PAPACY. 61 

fashion, but when Louis tried to take one step further and 
induce the pope and the Romans to take an oath of fideUty 
to him personally as king of Italy, this proved 
tiie Kingdom to be too much. The pope declared that he 
of Italy. owed no oaths to any one but the sacred 

emperor himself, and Louis had to be content with a coro- 
nation as king of Italy or of "the Lombards." This may 
seem a very fine distinction, but it was a distinct and effectual 
protest against the idea that Rome was to form a part of the 
state of Italy — a ninth-century form of the same protest 
which is at this moment being made in every public docu- 
ment of his imprisoned Holiness against the occupation of 
Rome by the Italian government. 

The administration of Sergius is noteworthy for the 
terrible assault of the Arab pirates in 846 which revealed 
Arab Assault ^° ^^ world the danger of the holy city, but 
on Rome, could rouse only a feeble effort in its defense. 
® * The only effectual resistance for a long time 

came from a league of the rising commercial cities, Amalfi, 
Gaeta and Naples. This league defeated the pirates in 
a naval battle off Ostia in 849, and thus gave Rome a 
breathing-space to complete the new fortifications, begun 
the year before, which were to include within the walls the 
quarter of St. Peter's. The name of this new quarter, the 
" Leonine City," keeps in remembrance the name of the 
successor of Sergius, a vigorous and capable man. He 
also was elected in great haste and without imperial sanc- 
tion, and we have no definite information that this neglect 
of a recent obligation was followed up in any way by the 
emperor. Most certainly it did not add to the attach- 
ment of the Romans for the empire that their new pro- 
tectors had not saved their two most precious sanctuaries, 
the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul, with their untold 
wealth of sacred objects, from falling a prey to the Arabs. 



62 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [855 

The party of the Roman nobles was glad of this or 

any other excuse for doing without the emperor, while at 

_ .. the same time we see clearly forming another, 

Formation . . 

of Parties which was to be known as the imperial, party. 
m ome. Between these two the papacy, as far as its own 
special interests were concerned, may be thought of as a 
third party, but it was too often reduced to being the play- 
thing of the others. With the formation of these three 
parties we have a clue to the inner politics of the Roman 
state for many hundred years. The next election brings 
out these differences into a very clear light. As soon as 
Leo IV was dead the "Roman party" elected Benedict III 
and sent off messengers to announce the election, " accord- 
ing to ancient custom," as the Roman historian puts it, to 
the emperors Louis II and Lothair. 

Meanwhile, however, the imperial party had set up a 
candidate of its own and had been clever enough to win 

over the men whom the Romans had sent with 
Rival Popes. , r ^ t , 1 • rm 

the report of Benedicts election. I he new 

man, Anastasius, was forcibly brought into the city by the 

imperial officers and got possession of St. Peter's. Here 

we meet for the first time a situation which was to become 

common enough in the future ; one pope sitting in the 

Lateran, another in St. Peter's, waiting for the chances of 

Roman ward-politics to decide which of them was truly 

selected by God to represent Him on earth. Nothing but 

an unexpectedly unanimous refusal of the "people" of Rome 

to accept the imperial candidate finally prevailed upon the 

viissi of the emperor to drop Anastasius and agree to the 

consecration of Benedict. Thus the first attempt of the 

new empire to force a pope upon the Roman people had 

failed, but the victory of the Roman party was far from 

being a guarantee that the interests of the papacy in its 

larger aspects were safest in their hands. 



858-867] PAPACY OF NICHOLAS I. 63 

This first imperial candidate had been a notoriously 
corrupt and unfit person, but upon the death of Benedict 
(858), the emperor Louis II, being then in the 
^e*^^°J^^ ■^' neighborhood of Rome, put forward a man, 
whose name stands in the list of the few really- 
great popes, and whose papacy of nine years gives us an 
opportunity to study the relations of the papal power in 
almost all the phases which it was to assume during the 
period of its greatest triumph. Nicholas I conceived of the 
papacy as a divine instrument, sent by God into the world 
to watch over all the interests of right and truth. Accord- 
ing to this view there was no subject upon which it might 
not give a decision of authority, no power which it had not 
the right to call before its judgment-seat. We may study 
the working of this idea under the administration of 
Nicholas in three aspects : (i) in the relation of the papacy 
to the Greek church ; (2) in its dealings with local church 
powers, and (3) in its character of guardian of moral right. 

The relation of the papacy to the Greek church and, 
which was quite the same thing, to the Greek empire, had 

Nicholas ^^ng been a matter of great uncertainty. Let us 
and Con- remind ourselves once more that in the Byzan- 
s an op e. ^-^^ theory the bishops of Rome were still the 
subjects of the Roman, i.e., the Greek emperors. To 
be sure there had been a sort of formal acquiescence 
in Charlemagne's assumption of the imperial name, but 
nothing but the weakness of the eastern empire had made 
such acquiescence possible. The idea that there could be 
two Roman empires seemed to any vigorous Byzantine 
simply monstrous, and it was to be several centuries yet 
before such a state of things could peaceably be admitted. 
Now the theory of a single empire carried with it the idea 
of Rome as a bishopric under Constantinople, and though 
the emperors of the East had failed, as we have seen, in 



64 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [858-867 

every duty toward Rome, still this did not make them any 
less ready to assert the rights which the performance of that 
duty would have given them, whenever they got the chance. 
Meanwhile, however, the papacy had been growing, not in 
pursuance of any idle theory, but as a result of perfectly 
definite services to the cause of western Christianity. It 
only remained for an exceptionally vigorous pope to declare 
the tables completely turned and to maintain that Rome, 
far from being the subject of Constantinople, had a right, 
as head of all Christendom, to speak with authority on the 
affairs of the East as well as of the West. 

The occasion which called forth the action of Nicholas I 
was a conflict for the bishopric of Constantinople. The 

bishop, or patriarch, Ignatius, an aged man of 
vs. extreme piety and the loftiest virtue, had been 

Piiotius. turned out of his office in one of those scandalous 

revolutions which were continually happening at Constanti- 
nople. His offense was that he had refused to sanction 
the openly immoral life of the all-powerful guardian of the 
young emperor. In his place had been appointed a layman, 
Photius, a distinguished scholar and, doubtless a man of 
great capacity. He had been rushed through the lower 
orders of the clergy, in direct violation of the church rule, 
which required that a man should really have filled the 
lower orders before becoming a bishop. Ignatius, driven 
from his place, called upon the bishop of Rome to defend 
him. Nothing could have been more opportune. 

Nicholas entered into the affair with all the eagerness of 
a combatant sure of his ground and with a great cause at 

stake. He assumed from the beginning that 

As^mptioiis j^^ action was taken by fis^ht, in virtue of the 
of Nicholas. -^ ^ ' 

supreme authority of the Roman see over all 

churches. His language in the various documents which 

passed from him to the emperor is that of a sovereign 



858-867] NICHOLAS I AND THE EAST. 65 

dealing with subjects. The singular thing is that he should 
have been allowed to go so far. His legates were admitted 
to conference with the heads of the eastern church, and 
were treated sometimes with respect, sometimes with abuse, 
but always with regard for the source from which they came. 
So considerable was the dread of Roman influence in Con- 
stantinople, that when Nicholas despatched a more than 
usually fiery document, summing up the whole case and 
designed to be a final settlement, the frontiers of the whole 
empire were carefully guarded that the messengers might 
not reach the capital. The alleged ground of the interfer- 
ence of Rome in this affair was the defense of an injured 
man against abuse and injustice ; but there were some other 
matters at stake of far greater consequence. 

One of these was the so-called "iconoclastic contro- 
versy," which had been raging between East and West now 
for many years. This controversy turned upon 
clastic Con- the proper use of pictures and images in the 
roversy. churches. The earliest Christians had been 
very much opposed to any representation of Deity, or of 
any object of their devotion. All such visible objects 
seemed to them to smack of heathenism ; but gradually 
such scruples had been overcome, and churches had been 
most splendidly adorned with pictures, especially in mosaic- 
work, and with statues. Then again in the eighth century 
a reaction had set in against this practice and had, as was 
inevitable in the East, taken on the form of a fanatic zeal to 
destroy all traces of what was now described as an idola- 
trous practice. The new religious spirit entered of course 
into the politics of the court, and the government had done 
its best, now to encourage and now to repress, the outbreaks 
of this fanatic enthusiasm. The conflict had been carried 
over into Italy, but only here and there, under oriental in- 
fluence, could so extravagant ideas take hold. The Roman 



66 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [858-867 

church had, in the main, taken its usual fair and cool- 
headed view of this question. It had declared that the 
images were a help to true devotion and might, therefore, be 
allowed. This was one of the great agencies which were 
always at work to draw the two churches ever farther apart. 

Then there was a very important territorial difficulty. If 
we should go back as far as the days of Leo I in the 
fifth century, we should find the western church 
Bulgrarian eagerly maintaining its right of control over the 
Question. territory known as the diocese of East Illyria, of 
which Thessalonica was the chief city. The attempt made 
at that time to keep the bishop of that city in subjection to 
Rome as papal legate, had failed, as it was clear that any 
attempt to maintain direct Roman authority anywhere east 
of the Adriatic must ultimately fail ; but the papacy had 
never lost this ambition out of sight. A great part of the 
East-Illyrian diocese had been overrun in the seventh cen- 
tury by the barbaric race of the Bulgarians, a branch of the 
great Turanian family, and the whole valley of the lower 
Danube had since then been in the possession of these 
most unpleasant neighbors. Early in the ninth century, the 
king of the Bulgarians had been converted to Christianity 
by missionaries from Constantinople and had with some 
difficulty succeeded in forcing his people to follow him. 
But then agents of the Roman church had been sent into 
the land and had persuaded the king that his Christian 
teaching was all wrong because it had come from Con- 
stantinople, not from Rome, and had so worked upon his 
fears that he now applied to Pope Nicholas for instruction 
in the true faith. 

We have the elaborate answer of the pope to a long list 
of questions sent him from Bulgaria, and a very capable 
document it is. Nicholas rests his right to instruct the 
Bulgarians, not merely on the ground of an application to 



858-867] NICHOLAS I AND BULGARIA. 67 

him, but upon the ancient supremacy of Rome over the East- 

lUvrian diocese, of which the land of Bul2;aria 
Claims and J ' o 

Cotinter- formed a part. He instructs the king that all his 
Claims. teaching from Constantinople has been nothing 

less than heretical, and that no salvation remains for him 
and his people but in a direct association with the see of 
Peter, the one unstained source of the true Christian faith. 
This claim was, of course, met by equally strong replies from 
the East. Bulgaria was a part of the eastern empire and, 
therefore, could not be joined in religious matters to the 
church of the West. In doctrine, it was the western church 
that had introduced such soul-destroying heresies as the 
celibacy of the parish clergy, the evils of which were already 
showing themselves, fasting on Saturdays, using milk and 
eggs during the first week of Lent, and above all things the 
awful theory that the Holy Ghost proceeded " from the 
Father and the Son." 

The claim upon Bulgaria came in very opportunely in the 
midst of the quarrel about the patriarchate of Constanti- 
nople. The advantage gained by Nicholas from 
los/t^Rome ^^^ appeal made to him in the latter case seemed 
to give him some chance of success in the former, 
and he did his utmost, but it was a fight against the nature 
of things. It was, as the eastern church had rightly 
declared, absurd that a country within the control of the 
eastern empire should have its church connections with 
Rome ; the claims of the papacy to sovereignty in East- 
Illyria were as antiquated as its theory that Constantinople, 
being only the seat of government, must give way to its own 
pretensions as the seat of Peter. The more these questions 
of detail were discussed, the clearer it became that the great 
underlying distinctions, political, racial and religious, were 
too powerful to be overcome, and the momentary success of 
Nicholas in getting a hearing for himself in the case of 



68 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [860-S67 

Ignatius only served to make the antagonism more bitter, 
and the hope of a union more dekisive. The Ignatian ques- 
tion prolonged itself beyond the life of Nicholas. It is a 
wretched history of deceit and violence, made respectable 
only by the largeness of the issues involved. Its outcome 
was the definite separation of the two churches, and with 
that the opening up of a way for the more effectual spread 
of the papal theory in the ^^'est. 

We come to the second of the great occasions in which 
Nicholas I carried the action of the papacy to a point of 
, boldness and success it had never yet reached. 

Divorce of King Lothair II of Lorraine, great-grandson of 
mgf air. (^"hj^i-igmagne, had married from motives of state 
policy a lady named Teutberga, belonging to a powerful 
family in Burgundy, Previously to this, indeed from early 
youth he had, in accordance with the too frequent practice 
of his day, lived in unlawful relations with another lady, 
also of good family, named Waldrada. His marriage prov- 
ing distasteful to him, he finally determined to divorce his 
wife and regularly to marry Waldrada. He based his action 
upon hideous charges of immorality against his wife, and 
was supported in it by the principal clergy of his own king- 
dom, especially by the great bishops of Cologne and Treves. 
Teutberga was brought before a court composed of laymen, 
and, on being accused, demanded to prove her innocence by 
the ordeal of boiling water. Her champion came out of the 
trial unhurt ; there was, therefore, according to the ideas of 
the time, nothing for the court to do but to declare her 
innocent. The king did not, however, restore her to her 
rights, but kept her in confinement for two years following. 
At the end of that time the case came up -again upon 
what passed for a request from Teutberga that she might be 
released from her marriage vows and permitted to take the 
veil as a nun. This time she was brought before a meeting 



860-867] NICHOLAS I AND LOTH AIR II. 69 

of a few of the leading clergymen of Lorraine, the intimate 

counsellors of the king, and made a full con- 
condemned fession of the atrocious crimes that had been 
by a Lorraine charged to her. Letters giving an account of 

the case were sent, one to the clergy, another to 
the lay nobles of Lorraine, and measures were taken to 
secure the approval of the king's uncles, Louis the German 
and Charles the Bald, by prudent yielding in the matter of 
certain territorial claims. A general assembly was called 
for the next month at Aachen, and the principal clergy from 
the neighboring kingdoms were invited to take part. Many 
accepted, the meeting was a large one, the affair was receiv- 
ing the greatest possible publicity. Again the unhappy 
queen was dragged before a public tribunal, again she con- 
fessed her guilt, and again she was " permitted " to enter 
the '' religious " life as penance for her crime. So far the 
king had controlled the action of all the powers within his 
own kingdom. Only one powerful voice, the one which 

would have been most valuable to him, was 
p^si ion raised against him. The great archbishop Hinc- 

mar of Rheims, not a subject of Lothair, but at 
that time the most eminent man among the Frankish clergy, 
refused to respond to the invitation to take part in the 
assembly at Aachen, and within a few months published an 
elaborate document, ponderous with canonical learning, in 
which he reviewed the whole case from the beginning, and 
showed in the clearest light the legal atrocities of the trial. 
For two years longer Lothair waited before taking the 

Lorraine ^^^^ ^^^P ^^ ^^^ plan. Teutberga was disposed 
Clergy of, but he had as yet got no consent to a regular 

Marriage marriage with Waldrada. Such a marriage, involv- 

witli ing the question of the right of her children to 

"Waldrada. .i • • x • 1 • /• 

the succession in Lorraine, was a subject of 

too great consequence to the whole Frankish state to be 



70 PAPACY IN THE CAROLIXGIAX PERIOD. [860-S67 

entered upon without a substantial agreement of all the 

kings, and to this end Lothair directed his policy during the 

two years of waiting. In April, 862, he again summoned 

the chief clergymen of Lorraine to Aachen and there, with 

many protestations of penitence for past wrong-doing, asked 

their approval for his marriage. The pliant priests found 

plenty of good reasons for complying, and the marriage was 

celebrated in the same year. 

This was the opportunity for the papacy. Already, 

before the news of the marriage reached Rome, Nicholas 

had determined to take notice of the com- 
Papal 

Legates won plaints which Teutberga had twice addressed 
by Bribery. ^^ \{\v[\.^ and had despatched legates to the 
north with a commission to meet the clergy of the Franks' 
at Metz. Besides those of Lorraine, there were to be two 
representatives of the clergy from each of the other Frank- 
ish states. Once more Lothair was equal to the emergency. 
By delaying the invitations he succeeded in keeping out all 
but the Lorraine clergy, who were devoted to his interest. 
He appeared with a strong following, as if courting inquiry ; 
the absence of Teutberga was interpreted as a confession of 
guilt. Best of all for him, he was able to bribe the papal 
legates into compliance, and the result was that a local 
synod, acting in apparent harmony with Rome, once more 
supported the king in all his plans. The two principal clergy- 
men of the country, the archbishops of Cologne and Treves, 
were despatched to Rome to announce the result to the pope. 
Thus the issue was distinctly marked. It was no longer 
simply a question of guilt or innocence ; it was a struggle 

for life between the idea of a national clergy, 
The . 

Real Issue directing the religious affairs of its country by 

defined. ^^^ ^^^ authority, and the idea of a single con- 

trolling spiritual power to which an appeal might be made 
from any local action. The king of Lorraine appears as 



860-867] NICHOLAS I AND LOTHAIR II. 71 

the representative of a cause which might well nave engaged 

the enthusiasm of the greatest statesmen of this or any 

other time ; but the defender of a great cause must enter 

into the conflict with clean hands, and, unhappily, the hands 

of Lothair were as far from being clean of base and selfish 

motives as could well be imagined. Here was the weak 

point in his armor, and Nicholas I was just the man to 

perceive it. He went into this fight as the defender, not 

so much of the rights of the Roman see, as of a wronged 

and innocent woman ; and he rested his case principally 

upon the mission of the papacy to be the universal judge in 

all questions involving the foundations of moral right. 

The ambassadors of Lothair were received at Rome with 

great coolness, were allowed to wait several weeks without 

„. ^ , a hearing:, and were then brought before a 

Nicholas ^' ... 

annuls all Lateran synod and assailed with positive fury 

rocee mgs. ^^ ^^ most outrageous criminals. They were 
accused of having aided and abetted in an unheard-of 
revolt against the rights of the holy see, and were declared 
excommunicated and deposed from their bishoprics. The 
archbishops, entirely deceived in their expectations by the 
crafty papal legates, who had been at Metz, at once has- 
tened to the emperor Louis H, Lothair's brother, and 
demanded vengeance on the pope for his insult to the 
Prankish name. Louis was only too ready to take up the 
quarrel, marched straight upon Rome, entered the city, 
and blustered violently about the outrage ; but, falling ill 
in a few days, was moved by this and other wonderful 
events to perceive the wrath of God against him, and let 
the cause of the archbishops drop. They returned to their 
places in Lorraine only to find the popular feeling entirely 
changed. Even Lothair, in whose cause they had braved 
the papal wrath, now showed the meanness of his nature 
by finding reasons why it was important for him to be on 



72 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [S60-867 

good terms with the pope ; and their fellow bishops, whose 
cause was really the same as their own, were unable to face 
with calmness the danger of the papal excommunication. 

Thus, all suddenly, as it were, the papacy discovered the 
force of its own weapons. Up to this time the excommuni- 
cation had not often been applied to enforce the 
Papal Leg-ate pg^pg^j discipline ; now that it had proved itself 
effective, we are not surprised to see it growing 
with each generation more and more frequent. Nicholas, 
now thoroughly roused, sent a special legate, an Italian 
named Arsenius, to regulate the Frankish aifairs. The 
errand of this legate was a complete triumph. He 
appeared, as a contemporary writer says, clothed with all 
the majesty of Rome, as if the holy father himself were in 
Gaul. His mission was not only to Lothair, but also to 
the rulers of the other Frankish states, whose alliance he 
secured before taking steps against the chief sinner. 
Lothair saw that a refusal to yield would certainly bring 
down upon him not only the spiritual terrors of the excom- 
munication, — probably that was the least of his concerns, 
— but also the active hostility of his dreaded 

Apparently ^mcles, and he yielded. The lee^ate sought out 
successful. ' -^ . . 

the banished queen in her retirement in France, 

and handed her back to her husband upon the solemn 

assurance of the latter that he would restore her to all her 

rights as queen. Waldrada was again driven from the 

court, and, after several months, in the absence of any 

sign of repentance, was formally excommunicated. 

It seemed as if this affair were ended once for all ; but 

it very soon became clear that Lothair had yielded only 

in form. He continued in relations with the 

Lothair excommunicated Waldrada, and, we know not 

persists. ' 

by what means, succeeded in forcing Teutberga 

to petition the papacy to be released from the intolerable 



867-870] NICHOLAS I AND LOTHAIR II. 73 

yoke of her marriage on the ground that it had never been 
a legal one. In the midst of these negotiations the great 
pope died, but his successor, Hadrian II, a man 
after the same mould, made a vigorous effort to 
maintain the same policy. Lothair now bent all his energies 
to the end that he might get to Rome and there secure from 
the pope himself the release of Waldrada from the excom- 
munication, and, if possible, the dissolution of his marriage 
with Teutberga. Through the mediation of his sister-in-law, 

_ ^ . wife of the emperor Louis II, an interview was 

Interview ^ ' 

with Pope brought about at the famous monastery of Monte 
Hadrian. Casino. It was evidently the ardent wish of the 

pope to stand well with the emperor and he was inclined 
to go as far in the direction of mildness toward Lothair as 
his conscience would allow. Lothair, calling again to his 
aid the ancient custom of the ordeal, demanded of the pope 
that he should give him the holy sacrament of the Eucharist 
as proof of his innocence. The pope finally assured him 
that if he would solemnly swear that he had, since the 
excommunication of Waldrada, had no relations with her 
whatever, he would allow him this purification. Thereupon 
the king made a solemn declaration that he had, in this 
interval of two years, not so much as exchanged a word 
with the excommunicated woman and received the sacra- 
ment. Most of his attendants, called upon in the same 
way, made the same statement and confirmed it by the 
same proof, the most sacred known to the legal practice 
of that day. 

Thus it was publicly proclaimed that the penalty of ex- 
communication, so often threatened by Nicholas, was not, 
Death of ^^^ ^^^^ present at least, to be turned against 

Lothair II, Lothair. The pope promised to defer action 
until the affair should be again investigated in 
the north and Lothair set out on his return journey. Hardly 



74 PAPACY LV THE CAROLING I AN PERIOD. [862-867 

h.ul he left Rome, however, when he and most of his com- 
panions fonnd themselves attacked by the deadly Italian 
fever and numbers were falling daily before the king's eyes. 
He was able to drag himself as far as Piacenza and there 
died. Popular report, of course, connected the time and 
manner of his death with his evil life. A legend, adorned 
with the usual mass of details, soon arose and contributed 
its part in tixing the tradition of the sanctity of Rome and 
the danger of every violation of her will. Even so steady a 
head as Hincmar could not fail to see in this sudden death 
the vengeance of God for the lie with which the king had 
taken upon him the holiest of all sacraments. The cruel 
heat of an Italian August in the malarial region of the 
Campagna will be a sufficient explanation to the modern 
historian. 

A third instance of the policy of Nicholas 1 is shown in 
the case of the bishop Rothad of Soissons. Soissons was a 

suffragan bishopric of Rheims, the bishop a man 
3. Nicholas ,, \ . 1 1 i ,• 1 

and the '^^'^h along m years, waio had tor a long tune 

Metropolitan been in unfriendly relations with the metro- 
Power. ,. ^,. „ 1 . T 

politan. Jbinally he came mto open conflict 
upon the question of the right of a bishop to discipline 
a priest without consulting his superior. One of Rothad's 
priests had been caught in open crime and, without waiting 
for any forms, Rothad had deprived him of his office. For 
this he was called to account by Hincmar and at once 
appealed to Rome. His purpose was to go himself to the 
pope and present his case, but Hincmar got wind of this 
intention, arrested him and kept him for many months a 
prisoner. News of this affair came to Nicholas 1 at the 
same time with the report of the Lothair divorce case and 
he took action upon the two together. We have his letters 
written to Hincmar and to the West-Frankish king, Charles 
the Bald, in which he demands that Rothad should either 



865] NICirOJ.AS I AND n/NCMAR OF h' I HUMS. 75 

be restored at once to his place or should be allowed to 
come to Rome, together with his accusers, and there be 
tried by the papal court. 

The king, needing very much the papal support in his 
political schemes, undertook to see that Rothad should be 

allowed to come to Rome and kept his word. 
mncmar s Hincmar could do nothing but protest, warning 

the pope of the dangerous consequences of such 

interference with the affairs of the national churches. He 

reminds him that, while no one questions the right of the 

papacy to give judgment upon appeal from any court, or to 

take original action in the case of a metropolitan, there is 

no precedent for its right to act directly in the case of a 

subordinate bishop. Such action, he says, is beneath the 

dignity of the holy see and must tend to undermine the 

wholesome authority of the metropolitan in the national 

churches. But this was precisely the thing the pope wished 

above all else to do, and he was willing to take the risk of 

diminishing the papal authority by too frequent exercise. 

Still Nicholas did not hurry the matter. He allowed 

Rothad to wait six months in Rome before proceeding to 

... , , decisive action : at the end of that time he de- 

mcaolas ' 

re-instates clared him, in the absence of an accuser, inno- 
^ * cent of the charges against him and threatened 

that if, within four weeks, no action were taken by the metro- 
politan, he would formally restore Rothad to his bishopric. 
Hincmar remained inactive, and the formal restoration took 
place. Rothad was sent, in charge of that same legate, 
Arsenius, who had in hand the settlement of the Lothair 
case, back into France and there with all solemnity re- 
inducted into his office. The victory of Nicholas 
Virtory^ in this case also was complete. The power of 
the metropolitan, and through this the rights 
of the national church had received a blow from which 



76 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [867 

they were not to recover for at least five hundred yearSo 
The royal power had lent its aid in a victory which must 
sooner or later react upon itself. If the papal power had 
the right to act, of its own motion, in all affairs of religion 
— and what affair was there which might not b'e turned into 
a religious one ? — then there was no room for any other 
power, in state or church. Compare this attitude of the 
papacy with that of the time of Charlemagne, and it be- 
comes clear wdiat enormous strides it had already made on 
the road to absolute dominion. 

The case of Rothad of Soissons is of interest to us 
chiefly because it was the occasion for bringing out before 
the eyes of Europe the legal foundations upon 
dations of which the whole mighty structure of the mediae- 
Papal Power. ^,^j papacy was to be built up. Down to a late 
period the papacy had based its action chiefly upon broad 
general claims, which no one had especial interest in 
disputing ; it did thus and so by virtue of the Petrine 
succession, or because Rome was the mother church of the 
West, or for some other reason which carried weight at the 
moment. But as time went on it became necessary to put 
these claims into a more definite legal form. The earliest 
attempt of this sort is the collection known by the name of 

its author, Dionysius Exig-uus, an eastern monk, 
Dionysius ' / 07 

Exiguus, living most of his life, probably, at Rome. This 
about 500. Dionysian collection contained fifty so-called 
"apostolic canons," short precepts, drawn from the Bible 
and from the writings of the early church fathers, and also 
the decrees of several councils of the eastern and African 
churches, between the years 314 and 451, that is, from the 
time when Christianity began to be the religion of the 
empire in the time of Constantine, down to the great 
council of Chalcedon. To this collection there was added 
later a second part containing letters (decretals) of the 



c. 500-600] EARLY COLLECTIONS OF DECRETALS. 77 

Roman bishops from 375 to 498. This second part was 
then further increased from time to time by the addition of 
more decretals, running farther and farther back, until at 
length this sort of document, too, had been carried back to 
the establishment of Christianity by Constantine as the 
state religion. It was this collection, undoubtedly, which 
had been sent by pope Hadrian I to Charlemagne and 
publicly proclaimed by him at the great assembly, of Aachen 
in 802 as the basis of church law for the 

Til A ' • 

,,„. „ Frankish state. Another very similar collection 

was made in Spain, probably near the beginning 
of the seventh century, and was known by the name of the 
bishop Isidore of Seville. 

In both these great collections the decretals of the Roman 
bishops had been introduced as sources of church law. 
Defect of equally with decrees of councils and the " apos- 
Early tolic canons " and even the teachings of the 

ec ions, gibie^ These decretals had been carried back 
to the time when Christianity could first be said to have any 
law of its own, that is to the time when it was recognized 
by the state as having a legal existence. But it will be seen 
at once that here was an admission which the infallible 
church of Rome could not afford to make. The Roman 
church claimed, and claims to this day, that it is the 
foundation of Christ himself and is, therefore, independent 
of any state recognition whatever. To date the authority 
of its head, therefore, from any time later than the time of 
Christ himself must seem to the thorough-going Romanist 
a serious reflection upon all those bishops of Rome — or, 
if you please, "popes" — who filled up the interval from 
Peter to Constantine. What a glorious triumph for the 
church if only there could be found a similar series of 
decrees by these early popes, thus carrying the authority of 
the holy «ee back to its very origin ! That such decrees 



78 PAPACY IN THE CAROLIXGIAN PERIOD. [c. 850 

unfortunately did not exist was a slight obstacle. If they 
were necessary to a system which honestly believed itself 
to be the one divinely appointed means of leading men into 
their true relations with God, then to fabricate them and 
pass them off as genuine must be a work pleasing in God's 
sight. 

Such was, presented in its most charitable light, the origin 
of the "Forged Decretals," the most stupendous of the 
many forgeries by which the Roman church has 
Tiie ^^^^^ built up its immense power over the lives of 
men. It is during the controversy between pope 
Nicholas I and the metropolitan Hincmar, about the case of 
bishop Rothad of Soissons, that we first find reference to a 
collection of papal decrees, going back beyond the time of 
Constantine and reaching even to the successor of Peter 
himself. Precisely when, where or how this collection 
originated is matter of controversy. The weight of scholarly 
opinion to-day is in favor of the view that it was made in 
France, by some person or group of persons interested in 
raising to the very highest point the authority of bishops 
over the laity, in making the connection of the episcopate 
with the papacy as close as possible and thus in diminishing 
the power of the metropolitan. The time seems to coincide 
with the papacy of Nicholas I, but it is possible that this 
collection was made long before and only brought into 
use when the extraordinary activity of that pope made it 
necessary. 

As to the fact of the forgery there is now no doubt what- 
ever. It is admitted by every one, Roman Catholics as well 
as others. The onl}' difference is in the under- 
e ense standing of the purpose of the originators. The 

defense of the church is that if these decretals 
were not really written by the earliest bishops of Rome they 
might have been, and, if occasion had arisen, \wDuld have 



c. 850] THE FSEUDO-ISIDORIAN DECRETALS. 79 

been. Such a defense sounds queer to modern ears, but 
we have to remember that literary forgery, especially where 
a matter of religion was concerned, has seldom been 
regarded with too rigid criticism. The end has seemed to 
justify the means, and the inquiry into origins to be a piece 
of hostile impertinence. 

The collection usually called the "forged decretals" was 
published under the name of Isidore, suggesting some con- 
Purpose nection with the great bishop of Seville, but it 
of the was certainly not made by him. It contained 
orgery. much the same material as that in the Isidorian 
collection, but was increased by about one hundred docu- 
ments, mostly decrees of the Roman bishops of the first 
three centuries and acts of councils which were never 
passed. The mildest judgment represents the purpose of 
these forgeries to be the elevation of the priesthood, and 
especially of the episcopal order as a means of enforcing 
moral and religious precepts among the people of Europe. 
Probably the authors believed that by representing the 
priesthood as an institution going back to the very be- 
ginnings of the church, they were doing the very best thing 

1. Elevation ^^^^ could to make it effective in its holy work. 
of the But the defenders of the fraud are inclined to 
Episcopate, ^j-^ ^^^^^^^ lightly over another tendency of these 
documents, namely, the tendency to represent the Roman 
papacy as the one single source from which this priesthood 
derived its powers. 

It is this tendency which has given to the False Decretals 
their greatest fame and which made them most important in 

2. Elevation ^^^^^ '^^^ ^'^^ ^^^ following time. Of course the 
of the great mass of persons in the different countries 

apacy. ^^ Europe knew and cared little about the legal 

bases of the papal power, but when it came to such conflicts 
as those we have just been studying, the case of Lothair, 



80 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD, [c. S50 

the. deposition of Rothad of Soissons, cases involving the 
right of the papacy as against local powers, both in church 
and state, it proved of infinite value to the papacy that it 
could point to such venerable documents as these, made 
sacred by the very fact of their antiquity, to support its 
claims. We wonder, of course, that the falseness of such 
authorities was not at once exposed, especially when there 
were persons and institutions directly interested, in weaken- 
ing the force of the papal demands ; but we have to 
remember that what we call in our time the critical spirit, 
the instinct to examine closely into the accuracy and genu- 
ineness of published documents, was at that time almost 
entirely v/anting. The instinct then was to believe any- 
thing, and the more strange it was, the more likely it was 
to be believed. Indeed, to the mediaeval mind there was 
a certain impiety in disbehevnig anything, especially if it 
was a thing connected with religion in any way whatever. 
It was not the forger of papal documents, but the critic 
of them, who would have needed to apologize to the 
literary conscience of the ninth century. 

So the False Decretals remained unquestioned, quoted 
and believed in until the fifteenth century, when, under the 

lio-ht of a new spirit of learnins: and inquiry. 
Importance * ^ & n j ' 

of the men dared, in a half-hearted way still, to throw 

Forgery. doubts upon them. Then it was seen that they 
were not only a forgery, but a clumsy one at that, so clumsy, 
indeed, that the moment the light was let in upon them the 
fact became perfectly evident. During that interval of six 
hundred years it is safe to say that nothing contributed so 
much to the tremendous hold of the papacy over the mind 
of Europe. By means of this collection, the basis of church 
authority was entirely shifted from its original foundations 
and transferred to a new one. If we consider this authority^ 
for a moment, several possible foundations for it will occur 



c. 850] VALUE OF PSEUDO-ISIDORE. 81 

to US. There is, first, the teaching of Jesus, as recorded in 
the Gospels of the New Testament ; then there are the 
writings of his apostles, also found in the New Testament, 
then the decisions of general councils, when these have been 
accepted by the whole church, then the interpretations of 
the biblical writings by the early leaders of the church, and 
finally, answers to inquiries from newly founded churches, 
given by older communities, especially by such as claimed 
an apostolic foundation, like Alexandria, Antioch or Rome. 
Such answers to inquiries given by Roman bishops are 
the decretals which, as we have just seen, made up the 
greater part of the so-called Isidorian collection. Now the 
essential point here is that an equal weight was given to 
these decretals with all the other venerable sources of 
church law just mentioned. The aim of Rom.e was to make 
an utterance of a Roman bisliop equally important with a 
direct teaching of Jesus, or with the decree of a general 
council, or with the opinion of an early father, such as 
Clement, or Origen, or Augustine, and it required very 
little knowledge of the Roman pretensions to see that 
it would not be long before such utterances would, in all 
practical cases, be declared superior to every other kind of 
declaration. 

The acknowledgment of the Isidorian Decretals marks 
the beginning of what may properly be called the "decretal 
^^^ system" of church law as distinguished, for in- 

"Decretal" stance, from the "conciliar system." Accord- 
ojpose'd ^^^ ^° ^^^ \-2X\&^, the pope would have been a 

sort of executive officer, whose function it was 
to administer a system of law which was defined, and in 
I. to the ^^^^^ °^ doubt was to be interpreted, by the 
"Conciliar" common consent of Christendom. In this view 
the Church would have been a democratic insti- 
tution, governing itself through a representative body, whose 



82 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [c. 850 

agent the pope was to be. Such a theory of the church, 
however, was entirely inconsistent with the Petrine theory 
and all its consequences. , One or the other must give way, 
and the defeat of the conciliar system was secured as soon 
as men were willing to accept such a complete statement of 
the opposite idea as was furnished by the new collection. 

Still another theory of the church might be conceived of, 
which we may call the "evangelical." Indeed, from the 
2 to the beginning to the end, there were never wanting 
"Evangel- men who would have based the whole authority 
ic eory. ^£ ^j^^ church upon the WTitten word of the New 

Testament, taking that word with more or less literal exact- 
ness. According to this view there could be no authority in 
the Church but such as could be found in the earliest 
Christian documents, that is in the Gospels themselves. 
Now the papacy declared and still declares, that it was 
itself founded by the Founder of Christianity, though when 
it came to showing documentary proof of this, there simply 
was none to show. So this " evangelical " theorv, even 
more than the conciliar, was utterly at variance with that 
conception of its own character, which the papacy had 
already reached ; indeed, in the time we are now studying 
it had been practically abandoned, to be revived again only 
in the great struggles of the Reformation. 

By the death of Nicholas I, in 867, we may regard the idea 

of the mediaeval papacy as practically fixed in the form it 

was to maintain. It only remained for succeed- 
Papal . . 

Supremacy ^^^g popes to apply this idea to the actual circum- 

^^^^ stances of their times. It so happened that the 

immediate successors of Nicholas were men of 

very considerable character, and there was no power in 

Europe strong enough to resist them. Hadrian II was 

elected by the Romans without consulting the emperor 

Louis II, but, as usual, this omission was apologized for, and 



871] THE PAPACY SANCTIONS THE EMPIRE. 83 

the apology was accepted. Indeed, the emperor went a 
step farther than any of his predecessors in the direction of 
submission to the papacy in a very remarkable letter which 
he wrote to the emperor of the East during the time of 
Hadrian. Louis had just taken the Greek city of Bari from 
the Saracens, and had received an insulting letter from the 
eastern emperor Basilius, declaring him to have usurped 
the name of emperor, which could belong by right only 
to him who had inherited it in direct line from the ancient 
empire. 

Louis, in his long reply, reminds the Greek that his uncles, 
the kings of France and Germany, his seniors in age, did 

not hesitate to give him his title of emperor. 
Letter recognizing his consecratioii and u?tction by the pope 

as giving hii7i a higher dignity than their ow7i. 
The kings of the Franks, he says, " did not gain this title by 
usurpation, but by the will of God, declared through the 
papal consecration." Not ''emperor of the Franks," as the 
Greek had called him, but "emperor of the Romans " is his 
proper title, since, being first king of the Franks, he, like 
his ancestors, has been called to the defense of the holy city 
and its high priest. From Rome, his fathers received, first 
the title of kings and then that of emperors, " such, namely, 
as were consecrated thereto by the pope, with the holy oil," 
while other emperors had been raised to power by the choice 
of Senate and People, by the acclamation of soldiers, or 
through the favor of women, without any divine sanction 
whatever. Were then the Franks less worthy to bear the 
imperial name than Spaniards, Isaurians and other non- 
Romans who had held the empire without question ? More 
than this, the Franks, by their Christian faith, have 
become the true holders of the empire, while the Greeks, 
through their heresies and through their neglect of the 
holy city, and through their abandonment of the Roman 



84 FAFACV IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [871 

language and the Roman people, have lost their claim to 
this title. 

These lofty claims, put into the mouth of the emperor, 
doubtless, by some clever Roman priest, give us the clearest 
. - understanding how far the emperor himself was 

Imperial willing to go in theorizing about the nature of 
ower. ^^ imperial office, and help us to comprehend 

the action of the papacy both at this moment and for a long 
time to come. The most striking thing about the letter is 
its acknowledgment that the title of the emperor is due 
wholly to the coronation by the pope. This alone dis- 
tinguishes the emperor from the king. Such of the Frankish 
kings, it says, as had received this consecration from the 
pope, are properly called " emperors." And this from a 
man who had, on several occasions, shown a very keen sense 
of his right, as emperor, to control the actions of popes. 
The character of the empire for a hundred years is expressed 
in this one document. It was virtually an abdication by 
the emperor of all those rights which his predecessors had 
claimed and exercised as against the papal power. The 
consequences of this change of base were not slow in declar- 
ing themselves. 

The successor of Hadrian II, the Roman John VIII (872), 
was, again, a man of force and talent, ready to carry out the 
theory of the papal supremacy at every oppor- 
the Bald, tunity. We have no information as to his elec- 
Emperor, tion, whether it was in accordance with the wish 
of the emperor Louis or not. More important now is the 
other side of the question, the approval of emperors by the 
pope. King Lothair II of Lorraine had died in 870, and 
his death had been the signal for that unseemly scramble 
which resulted in the Partition of Meersen, the extinction of 
the middle kingdom and the division of the whole northern 
Frankish territory between France and Germany. So that, 



875] ^-^^^ PAPACY MAKES EMPERORS. 85 

when the emperor Louis II died in 875 without sons, we see 

for the first time clearly defined the rivalry of these two 

great nations for the imperial crown. In France there was 

for the moment but one candidate, king Charles the Bald, 

weak, cowardly, and inefficient in all duties of a king, but 

none the less eager to add the title of emperor to his name. 

In Germany there were still left Ludwig the German and his 

three sons. Until now the imperial succession had been 

provided for during the life of the emperor ; now for the 

first time there was an actual vacancy, and now, therefore, 

was the chance for the papacy. John VIII 

Created by declared himself in favor of France, and invited 
the Papacy. ' 

Charles to come to Rome for his coronation. 
Charles, having bled his people nearly to death in buying 
off the Norman invaders, bled them now again to pay for 
his new dignity, hurried over the Alps and got himself 
crowned with all possible speed. All the circumstances of 
his elevation show the great advantage of the papacy and its 
determination to make the most of it. The papal utterances 
are full of the spirit of the false decretals, and the emperor 
seems to have no scruple whatever in allowing himself to 
appear as the creation of the papacy. He let himself be 
crowned as king of Italy in Pavia, and appointed count Boso 
of Vienne in Burgundy as his regent in Italian affairs, but 
himself returned at once to France. 

What had the papacy gained by this apparent victory ? 
It had secured an emperor who was likely to keep himself 

far away from its affairs, and who had acknowl- 
Pap^Gain. ^^^^^ its powers to the full ; but, on the other 

hand, it had lost its defender against dangers 
from without, and had brought into its internal politics the 
element of rivalry between German and local Roman influ- 
ence, which was to be its chief danger for many a century. 
For the moment, John VIII seemed equal to the emergency. 



86 PAPACY IN THE CAROLINGIAN PERIOD. [875-877 

He succeeded in gaining a sufficient degree of union among 
the warring cities and principalities of Italy to hold the 
Saracens in check, raised a considerable fleet in the west- 
ern waters, and actually took command of it in a successful 
fight off the cape of Circe. Not onty was the papacy ready 
to declare itself superior to all earthly powders, but it was 
willing, if need were, to make itself an earthly power, and 
to forget its mission as the spiritual head of Christendom. 

If this brave and vigorous policy seems like a 
Actual Loss. . . , . 

justification of the papacy in its outward rela- 
tions, so much the more does it reveal the weak points in its 
internal affairs. The moment it undertook to be one 
among the powers of Italy, at that moment it ceased to 
command the reverence of the world. It opened the 
way for every sort of petty political squabble, and made 
of itself a prize to be struggled for by every political 
faction in its turn. 

The emperor Cliarles the Bald, summoned into Italy 
again to defend the pope from the enemies pressing him 

on every hand, did actually cross the Alps, and 
Charles the ^v^as hailed by John VIII as the savior of Italy. 
Bald, 877. p^jg saviorship, however, consisted in running 
away as soon as he heard that his nephew Karlmann was 
on the way from Germany to oppose him. Without waiting 
to hear what he could do for the pope, he left him at Pavia 
and hurried back over the Alps. On the way he died, 
poisoned, as the story ran, by a powder given him by his 
Jewish physician. The death of Charles brought forth all 
the conflicting hatreds which the new policy of the papacy 
had called into being. The real question was, should the 
empire be allowed to go to a strong man, who might show 
himself a dangerous servant ; or, should the pope himself 
raise to the empire some lesser prince, who might be 
expected to be more devoted to his interest. 



88 1 ] KARL THE FAT, EMPEROR. 87 

All those elements of the Roman state which saw hope in 
the German alliance gathered about the young Karlmann, 
who was already in Italy, and the pope did not 
Party upper- at once declare against him. Karlmann suc- 
"^°^^' ceeded in raising a strong party in northern 

Italy, and put himself in communication with all the 
enemies of John VIII in Rome. The pope, in despair, 
took ship and sought time for deliberation in France. 
The son and successor of Charles the Bald was far too 
weak to promise any hope whatever, and Count Boso of 
Vienne, a Burgundian noble who married the daughter 
of the emperor Louis II and had so far gained the 
pope's affection that he was declared adopted son of the 
vicar of St. Peter, did not prove equal to the occasion. 
After a year in France, the pope came back to Italy and 
went into diplomatic dealings in all directions without 
success. Meanwhile, the three German brothers, sons of 
I^^mg^the German, combined to maintain one of their 
number as emperor, and selected the worst of the lot. 
Rarl the Fat, conducted into Italy by the good will of his 
brothers, was forced upon the pope, and there was nothing 
'to do. but crown him. The new theory of a free choice of 
the emperor was kept up in form, but it was of little prac- 
tical use. Karl was no sooner crowned, than 
Emperor ^ ' ^^ ''*^^' turned his back upon the pope, gave 
no ailswer to his piteous demands for help 
against the Saracens, and left him to end his days in 
mourning at the defeat of all his most cherished plans. 
With the death- of John VIII we see the end of the period 
of brilliant r^ivival which had begun with the papacy of 
Nicholas I. The result of a generation of incessant political 
scheming had been the humiliation of the empire ; but, now 
as always, the papacy learned too late that only by support- 
ing a strong iraperial power could it succeed in enforcing 



88 PAPACY IN THE CAROLIiXGIAN PERIOD. [88 1 

its own control over the affairs of men. If a strong empire 
seemed to threaten its independence, a weak one was sure 
to leave it a prey to other enemies more dangerous yet, 
because they were not the bearers of any great idea which, 
like that of the divine empire, might be a real power in 
European affairs. 



CHAPTER III. 

REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A 
GERMAN BASIS. 888-950. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Regino Prumensis, Chronicon. (-906), M. G. i. Especially valuable 
for Lorraine and West P'rancia during the author's own time. 

LiUDPRAND OF Cremona, Antapodosis, 950 ; Historia Oitonis, 962 ; 
Legatio, 969. In M. G. iii & 8° ed. 2, 1877, L. was bishop of 
Cremona and employed by Otto I on the difficult embassy to Con- 
stantinople ; a very entertaining person, not worthy of great credit. 

Annales Hersfeldenses, to 984 ; lost, but carried on under several 
other names ; serving also as the foundation of the Chronicle of 
Lambert of Hersfeld. 

Ruotger, Vita Brunonis, archiepis'copi Coloiiieitsis. M. G. iv and 8°. 
Bruno, brother of Otto I, was his right-hand man during a great 
part of his reign. 

Richer of Rheims, Historiariim libri iv to 995, M. G. iii. R. was a pu- 
pil of Gerbert and lived in the midst of the early Capetian struggles. 

Thietmar, Bishop of Merseburg. Chro7iicon to 1018 ; M. G. iii. 
A clever compilation from existing annals with very valuable account 
of his own time, esp. for Otto III. 

WiDUKiNDi, Res gestae Saxonicae, (-973) M. G. iii, and in 8°, 3d ed. 
1882. The most important historical work produced in Saxony after 
the Prankish Conquest. 

Hrotsuita. (i) Car7nen de gestis Oddonis I imperatbi-is, M. G. iv, 
317. (2) De primordiis coenobii Gandersheimensis, M. G. iv, 306. 
Two important historical works by a nun of Gandersheim in Saxony. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Gerdes, Heinr. Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes und seiner Kultur 
im Mittelalter. Bd. i, 1891. 



90 THE ROMAX EMPIRE OX A GERMAX BASIS. [887 

Waitz, Gkorg. Jahrbiicher des Deutscheu Reichs unter Kiinig Hein- 

rich I. New ed. 1S63. 
KoPKE und DuMMLER. Kaiser 0\to der Grosse (Jahrb. d. Deutscheu 

Reichs). 1S76. 

While the title of "Emperor of the Romans" was being 

handed about in Italy at the will of the popes as a reward 

for services done or expected, the actual power, 

The Empire ^^^ ys\{YQ\\ alone a real empire of the West could 
broken up. - ^ 

be supported, was slowly rising in the North. 
We have seen that at the deposition of Karl the Fat the 
German elements of the Empire of the Franks had united 

in the support of the bastard Carolins^ian, Arnulf 

887. ^ . . . . ^ 

of Carinthia, while the remainder of that empire 
had fallen apart at once into what might perhaps be de- 
scribed as its natural divisions. Italy had become the 
spoil of Guido of Spoleto, Burgundy of Robert the Guelf, 
Neustria of Otto of Paris ; Aquitaine was held for Charles 
the Simple, and Provence for Louis, son of the usurper Boso. 
The theory of the unity of the empire of Charlemagne was 
gone forever. It is true, each of the "• little kings " sought 
the support and approval of Arnulf, but it is pretty clear 
that they were not inclined to think of him as their lawful 
superior in any sense. 

Nor was Arnulf eagerly desirous of pressing his claim to 
any such superiority. His first and chief care was to secure 
. ,-, „ the frontiers of his kinodom from the forei2:n 
lationswith enemies, who were pressing upon it in many 
Moravia. directions. The defeat of the Northmen at 
the great battle of the Dyle in Lorraine, put a stop for- 
ever to their incursions in that quarter and showed what 

could be done by an effective combination of 
891. •' . . 

the German forces. At the opposite extremity 

of his kingdom a new power had risen into dangerous pro- 
portions and had reached a point where it became threaten- 



892] ARNULF SECURES THE FRONTIERS. 91 

ing to the peace of Germany. The great Moravian duchy 
had extended its power over Bohemians, Poles and other 
peoples of Slavonic blood, until it had come to represent 
more nearly, perhaps, than any power has done since, a 
"Pan-Slavic" combination. It extended along the frontier 
of Germany from the middle Elbe to the great plain between 
Danube and Theiss. It had become Christianized after its 
fashion and had entered into a relation of semi-dependence 
upon the Prankish state. In the troublous times preceding 
the coming of Arnulf it had taken advantage of the Prankish 
divisions to make itself practically independent, and now 
the reigning duke, Swatopluk — or Zwentibold — declined to 
recognize the overlordship of Arnulf. After his Norman 
victory, therefore, the king moved his army against Moravia 
(892), but succeeded only in laying waste the country far 
and wide, without bringing the duke to a battle. Another 
campaign two years later was carried on much in the same 
way and ended with a defeat of the Bavarian contingent, 
the king himself barely escaping with a small following. 
Nothing but the death of the great duke in the same year, 
the division of the land between three sons, and the near 
approach of the dreaded race of the Hungarians on the 
southeast prevented Moravia from taking its place as one 
of the great, controlling forces of mediaeval Europe. As it 
was, its power declined with great rapidity, and it fell a prey 
to one conqueror after another. 

The defense of Germany against the northeastern Slavs 
along the lower Elbe and the Saale was in far better hands 
than any at the service of the king. There, 
S^ony^^ away in the North, the Saxon people, hardly dis- 
turbed in their internal affairs since their con- 
quest by Charlemagne, had gone on developing a solid 
political power, which was to reinvigorate and purify the 
demoralized institutions of the Pranks, as the Teutonic 



92 THE ROMAN' EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [893 

ancestors of both had revived and purified the Hfe of the 
degenerate Romans. Arnulf, recognizing that the frontier 
was safe in their hands, made a hasty visit to the country, 
in 892, on his way back from the Norman battle, but never 
again entered Saxony and seems to have had nothing 
further to do with it. 

Toward the west Arnulf adopted a measure of defense 
which seems of very doubtful value. He made his bastard 

son Zwentibold king of Lorraine, nominally, it is 
Lorraine. ... , . , . , 

true, still subject to him as emperor, but practi- 
cally independent. So far as we know he took no measures 
whatever to secure the future dependence of Lorraine upon 
Germany, rather than upon France, but deliberately added 
another to the smaller kingdoms into which the great 
Frankish state had fallen. The only motive of policy one 
can see in this act is, that he wished to make of Lorraine 
a "buffer" between the great states of the East and of the 
West, a use of that land which is at this very day put forth 
as justifying Germany in not restoring it to France, but 
holding it free from connection with any one of the German 
states as "imperial lands," to guard the peace of Europe. 
This son proved himself a most incapable person, interfer- 
ing with the quarrels of the western kingdom, now on one 
side, now on the other. He made himself so unpopular 
within his own borders that at the death of Arnulf the 
leading men of Lorraine united in giving back the land to 
Germany and in defending the cause of the little king 
Ludwig with such success that Zwentibold lost crown and 
life together in the conflict. 

When Arnulf had thus secured the frontiers of Germany 

on every side, he turned, by what seemed a natural 

^T^ „I^ instinct, to the idea of universal empire. Indeed 
Italy, 894. ' ^ ■ 

in the year before the establishment of Lor- 
raine he had been invited by the pope Formosus to come 



896] ARNULF, THE FIRST GERMAN EMPEROR. 93 

to Rome and receive at his hands the imperial crown. He 
had gone as far as Lombardy, had taken a few towns and 
had got himself crowned king of Italy, but the opposition 
had been so strong that he had been glad to get out of the 
country by the shortest way and back again into Germany. 
Three years before this the same pope Formosus, who, long 
before he became pope, had been, as bishop of Portus, an 
active supporter of the German party in Rome, had found 
himself obliged by political pressure to recognize Guido, 
duke of Spoleto, as emperor, and, a year later, to crown 
his son Lambert as his colleague and successor, but he had 
not ceased to look to Germany for the kind of imperial sup- 
port which no petty Italian prince was likely to be able to 
give him. 

Two years after Arnulf's first attempt the time seemed 
come for a second ; he had made himself strong in the 
North, the different German peoples were fairly 
Emperor. united in their support of him ; he was able to 
®^ ' get together a strong army, mainly of Swabians, 

and this time he succeeded in making his way to Rome. 
Not, however, at once into the city. The local Roman 
party was anything but pleased to have a German king 
interfering in Roman affairs and closed the gates against 
him. Arnulf was a resolute man ; he had come to get his 
crown, and within the city he knew there was the pope 
ready to give it to him. The only way was by force, and 
with the full support of his brave Swabians the king began 
the storm. Treachery within assisted him and the City of 
Leo was in his hands. From there negotiations began, the 
pope did as he had promised and so there were now two 
emperors, each resting upon the same papal coronation and 
claiming the full measure of rights and powers so conferred. 
Of course, therefore, the next care of Arnulf was to gain the 
isole power for himself. There seemed to be nothing in the 



94 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [900 

way of an easy conquest of the boy rival in Spoleto, when 
suddenly, that ally of all Italians against all Northmen, the 
deadly climate, began its work. Arnulf was suddenly pros- 
trated by disease and was able to do nothing more than get 
himself home again. 

This expedition of Arnulf was the first attempt of a 
German king to regulate the politics of Italy and it was to 

be the last for a half century. Meanwhile the 
^Tl ^if^ energ)^ of the German people was to be devoted 

to developing a powerful and united state, upon 
which all future attempts at world-sovereignty were to be 
based. Our attention is, therefore, now to be occupied with 
this very interesting problem. Arnulf never recovered from 
the illness which had driven him out of Italy, The remain- 
ing three years of his life were spent in fairly successful 
continuation of the same activities which had filled his 
earlier ones. They are chiefly remarkable for the first 
threatenings of the terrible plague of the Hungarians, which 
in the early years of the next century was to bring desola- 
tion upon all parts of the German kingdom. Singular that 
the man who had done more than any other to free the 
civilization of central Europe from invasion by the bar- 
barians of the North, should have come down in history as 
the one who, by a thoughtless alliance with the Hungarians 
in his wars against Moravia, taught these sons of the steppes 
to know what wealth and power were awaiting them if they 
could overrun the frontiers of Germany on the east. We 
shall hear more of these marauders when we come to study 
the history of Arnulf s immediate successor. 

Of all the numerous offspring of Arnulf but one legitimate 

" , . child survived him, a boy named Ludwiff, at the 

Ludwig: ' ^ . 

the CMid. time of his father's death barely six years old. 
900-911. j^ shows what progress the idea of a German 

kingdom had already made, that the leading men of the 



91 1] DEVELOPMENT OF BAVARIA. 95 

various stems were willing to unite in supporting this feeble 
.heir as king. Doubtless here, as so often afterwards, the 
very weakness of the candidate was his strongest claim to 
support. He offered to these restless nobles a rallying 
point for common action, if this should be needed, and at 
the same time he seemed not likely to interfere with the 
quiet development of their own power. For another eleven 
years the kingdom was thus secured against a tyrant, and it 
is in this interval that we can most profitably study the 
growth of those great ducal powers which were to be for so 
many hundred years the actual centres of German power. 

Bavaria was then pretty much what it is now, the country 
lying on both sides of the middle Danube, especially the 
great valley of the Inn. So far as it had a capi- 
DucMes: tal city, it was Regensburg, an ancient Roman 
I. Bavaria, frontier town at that point of the Danube where 
it reaches its most northern limit. As far back as the times 
of Charles Martel we find Bavaria governed by an old and 
well-established ducal family under its own laws. In spite 
of a marriage alliance with the Carolingian family, the house 
of Bavaria had refused to put itself under Frankish control, 
and the result was that Charlemagne had, by force of 
arms, destroyed the ducal power, and simply made Bavaria 
a province of the Frankish state administered by royal 
officers. In the divisions following his death, the country 
had been the chief seat of the eastern Frankish rulers. 
Ludwig the German, his son Karlmann and his grandson 
Arnulf, had each in turn regarded Bavaria as the natural 
centre of his power. It was the bulwark of the eastern 
kingdom, reaching out with its eastern " mark " along the 
Danube, down beyond where Vienna now is, and thus fur- 
nishing the natural starting-point for all military expeditions 
against the formidable enemies who, one after another, had 
pressed into this valley from the far East. 



96 THE ROMAX EMPIRE OX A GERMAX BASIS. [907 

In the midst of these incessant conflicts, the fighting 

nobility of Bavaria had developed a powerful sense of 

unity and local national pride. They had fur- 

The House wished the forces with which kina: Arnulf had 
of Luitpold. * 

fought his Moravian campaigns, and after his 
death they put themselves under the leadership of their 
bravest man, the markgraf Luitpold, who had made him- 
self master of all the eastern mark. Under his lead they 
set themselves in the way of the fearful Hungarian storm 
which, in the year 907, came sweeping up the great valley, 
carrying ruin everywhere before it. In the very first 
encounter the Bavarian army was annihilated. The mark- 
graf himself, the archbishop of Salzburg, the bishop of 
Freising and a host of other leaders, lay and clerical, 
remained upon the field. The Hungarians had forced 
their way up the valley as far as the Enns, and for the 
time remained settled there. The boy king, Ludwig the 
Child, betook himself into safe quarters, and Bavaria was 
left to recover from its disaster and to guard the rest of the 
kingdom alone. 

The affections of the nation gathered about their fallen 
hero, and without any formal act of which we have any 

record they put themselves under the lead of 

^"f^^ . his son Arnulf as the national duke. By this 
of Bavaria. , / 

process Bavaria returned to the situation in 
which it had been before the days of Charlemagne ; it 
became a united power within the larger life of a German 
kingdom. For the moment the local interest was far 
superior to the national one. 

Directly to the west of Bavaria, along the upper courses 

of both Rhine and Danube, taking in the whole eastern 

and northern parts of what is now Switzerland, 

lay the beautiful land of Swabia, or, as it had 

formerly been called, Alemannia, — then, as always, the 



91 1] BAVARIA, SWAB/A AND FRANCONIA. 97 

home of romance and poetry. Swabia had been for cen- 
turies under the Frankish rule, and had been governed by 
royal counts. But here, too, as in Bavaria, there had 
grown up an active and vigorous nobiUty, which had 
come to think of itself as quite independent of all royal 
authority. The absence of a capable sovereign led here 
also to a gathering of the discontented about a local hero ; 
but the forces of the king, aided by the clergy, were suffi- 
cient to repress and to punish cruelly the first attempt. 
Then occurred a thing which was often to happen in the 
future — the royal counts cast in their lot with the people 
of the land, and declared themselves at the head of the 
revolt. Not until late in the succeeding reign was there 
any successful effort to oust them, and then their cruel 
treatment served rather to weaken than to strengthen the 
hold of the kingly power in Swabia. 

Northward from Swabia and northwest of Bavaria, lay 
the land which of all others in Germany had become 
earliest and most completely identified with the 
conia^^ Frankish control. Hardly had the Salian Franks 
under Clovis got the better of their Ripuarian 
cousins, than they carried their arms eastward along the 
valley of the Main, as far as the borders of the Thuringians 
in the neighborhood of Bamberg ; and this Main valley, 
with that of the middle Rhine about Speier, Worms and 
Mainz, and the neighboring valleys of the Neckar, the 
Lahn and the head waters of the Weser, had ever since 
been known as eastern Frankland {Fra7icia Orie7italis). 
Here were the most numerous and the richest cities, the 
seats of the greatest bishoprics and the keys to the most 
important lines of traffic. In Franconia there were two 
centres of local influence, the family of the Bambergers in 
the east and that of the Conrads in the west. The latter 
were the relatives and friends of king Arnulf, and had 



98 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [911 

been raised to power by his favor. At his death war broke 
out between the two factions, the land was wasted from one 
end to the other, and the outcome of it was that the house 
of Bamberg w^as ruined ; while the family of the Conrads, 
helped to its victory by the royal support, found itself inde- 
pendent of all royalty, and exercised in Franconia, without 
the name, yet all the powers of a purely local duchy. 

Once more towards the north we find the fourth of the 
great ducal powers, and here we meet a development quite 

different from that in the southern lands. Here, 
rv. Saxony. 

along the lower courses of the great northward 

flowing rivers, the Ems, the Weser and the Elbe, had lain, 

since beyond all human record, the ancient, pure Germanic 

nation of the Saxons. Only a hundred years before, they 

had been conquered to Christianity and to civilization by 

the arms of Charlemagne ; but three generations is but a 

short time to transform a race. Doubtless, the leading 

forces of the nation had long since seen the necessity and 

the advantage of putting themselves into harmony with the 

dominant race of the Franks, but it is equally clear that the 

spirit of the people was still largely tinctured with heathen 

elements. Christianity and the Roman-Frankish civilization 

were hardly more than a varnish over a nature which still 

retained much of the barbaric force combined with much 

of the barbaric simplicity and directness of the ancient 

Germanic race. 

The control of the Frankish rulers in Saxony had never 

been complete. Though we read only once, during the 

reign of Louis the Pious, of an uprising of the 

axonyan Saxons against Frankish influence, it is clear 
the Franks. => ' 

that the kings, even of the eastern Franks, pre- 
ferred to keep themselves clear of the Saxon affairs, and to 
content themselves with such assurances of loyalty as the 
furnishing of troops and the payment of taxes would supply. 



91 1 ] DEVELOPMENT OF SAXONY. 99 

It is clear further that the leaders among the Saxons were 
growing steadily more accustomed to the relation with the 
Franks, and were coming to regard themselves as a part, 
though a very independent part, of the Frankish nation. 

The Saxon people appears from a very early time divided 
sharply into classes, with a clearly defined hereditary 
nobility at the head, and a well-marked subject peasantry at 
the foot of the scale. This order of the population had not 
been disturbed by the Frankish conquest. The nobility 
still continued to exist, and had added to its former claims 
the new element of an office-holding class under the royal 
supremacy. This nobility had found its mission, during the 
century after Charlemagne, in the defense of the eastern 
frontier of Saxony against the line of Slavonic peoples 
along the Elbe and Saale, and its leaders had acquired, just 
as similar leaders had done in Bavaria, a political influence 
over the whole race. 

Among these leading Saxon families was one which 
appears on the surface already in Charlemagne's time. It 
_,. - had been clever enough to see that the hope of 

House of the future for Saxony lay in the Frankish alliance, 

^ ^ ' and its head, a certain Ekbert, had married a 

lady closely related to the great emperor. His son, Ludolf, 
had 9-till further raised the fortunes of the house, and had 
married his daughter to the young king Ludwig, son of 
Ludwig the German. Ludolf's sons had led the Saxon 
"heerban" in 880, in a great battle against the Northmen, 
in which the land north of the lower Elbe was lost, and one 
of these sons. Otto the Illustrious, had, with the consent of 
all the Saxons, taken upon himself the defense of the land in 
the terrible times which followed upon the death of Arnulf. 
The little king Ludwig had nothing to say in Saxony, 
but the fighting men of the land had rallied around their 
own leader, and in successive campaigns had thrown back 



100 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [911 

the Hungarians from the south, and tribe after tribe of the 
Slavonic neighbors on the east. Nowhere else was the ducal 
power so thoroughly rooted in the affections of the people 
as here. 

Thus we see Germany at the death of Ludwig the Child 
divided into four nearly independent states, each one 

with some rallying-point for its own action, and 
Germany impatient of royal control. Lorraine, which 

might be counted as a fifth, was at this moment 

in the hands of the French Carolingian, Charles the Simple, 

handed over to him by a faction of its nobility at the death 

of Zwentibold. It seemed as if a moment had come when 

men would follow the example of their fathers and invite the 

only remaining "legitimate" sovereign of Charlemagne's 

blood, the French Charles, to reunite the Frankish empire. 

That they did not do this is the best proof that Germany 

was be2:innino: to be conscious of itself and to feel the 

instinct of nationality in politics as well as in blood. 

If we are to believe the Saxon chronicler, the first two 

cases of free election among the German stems show a 

, . ^ srenerositv of sentiment almost too lofty for the 
Election of ^ -' ■' 

Conrad I. men of any day, and surely very much out of 
9II-9I8. keeping with the later actions of the men who 

took part in them. The most prominent, the most power- 
ful and the most respected man in Germany in the year 911 
was undoubtedly Otto the Saxon, and, we are told, the lead- 
ing men of all the stems were anxious to give him the royal 
crown. But he, with rare modesty, declared that he was 
too old and feeble for so great a burden, and advised the 
princes to unite on his younger rival, Conrad of Franconia. 
This is the first real election of a German king. All the 
stems were represented, though it is clear that the Saxons 
and the Franconians determined the action of the assembly. 
After the election the king was crowned and anointed by 



9i6] POLICY AND FAILURE OF CONRAD I. 101 

the archbishop of Mainz as the' most important prelate 
of the German church. No reference whatever was made 
to the papal power. 

The problem of the new king was evidently to control the 
action of the local duchies, and to make them, as far as was 
possible, conscious of their common allegiance to 
a central authority. In order to do this it seemed 
to him necessary to enforce his own influence in the affairs 
of all the duchies, and an opportunity to do so occurred in 
each one in turn. In every case Conrad treated the reign- 
ing duke as a rebel, and sought to put him down by force of 
arms. Even against Henry of Saxony, the son of the man 
who had stood aside to let him ascend the throne, he 
showed the same narrow and jealous policy. The result 
was that, although he succeeded in making the royal 
authority felt in all directions, he succeeded als;) in making 
it thoroughly hated, and at the end of his life the stems were 
more active, more conscious of their identity, and less 
inclined to bear the aggressions of a royal house than ever. 

In all his struggles with the principle of local independ- 
ence Conrad was supported by the leading minds of the 
German church, for here as always the clergy 
theci^^ff^ was quick to perceive that its interest lay on 
the side of a strong single governrnent, which 
would protect it against the aggressions of a grasping and 
all too active nobility. The proof of this alliance of king 
and clergy is seen in the doings of a synod of the German 
clergy held in the year 916 at Altheim in Swabia. Clergy- 
men from all the stems but the Saxon were present, and the 
pope, John X, had sent a special legate with instructions to 
warn the Germans against the disorders which were ruining 
their land. The synod placed itself wholly on the side of 
the king, declared his enemies to be traitors and summoned 
them to present themselves before him and receive their 



102 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [919 

merited punishment. Nor did it omit all possible pre- 
cautions against an abuse of the property and rights of 
the church by ambitious laymen ; priests should not be 
summoned before lay judges and should be free to appeal 
from the judgment of a local synod to the pope. Disloyalty 
to the king, the natural protector of the church, was to be 
met by the curse of the church, the lot of the traitor should 
be "with Judas Iscariot and his like." 

In reliance upon the promise of the king certain of his 
most bitter enemies had given themselves up to him, ex- 

^ ., . pectins: a mild sentence, but Conrad, trusting: 
Failure of ^ * ' ' ^ 

Conrad's doubtless in the support of the clergy, con- 

Policy, demned the two most prominent to death and 

had them beheaded forthwith. Such a policy might have 
worked in the hands of a great man, by impressing the 
nation with a sense of his resistless power, but the resources 
of this king were too slight and the local patriotic feeling 
had become too strong. Again in all directions he saw the 
resistance of the most important elements taking form, and 
in the midst of the preparations to resist it he found himself 
ill unto death. The Saxon chronicler writes : 

" When Conrad felt his end draw nigh he called his brother 
Zberhard to him and said : — 'I feel, my brother, that I can 
bear no longer the burden of this life. It is the will of God 
that I must die. What is to become of the kingdom of the 
Franks, depends chiefly upon you ; therefore bethink you well 
and consider my counsel, the counsel of your brother. We 
(/.(?., the Franconians) have many vassals and a great people 
which obeys us ; we have many castles and weapons ; in our 
hands are the crown and the sceptre, and the splendor of the 
monarchy is with us. But fortune and the right spirit {jnores) 
are wanting to us. Fortune, my brother, together with the noblest 
spirit have fallen to the lot of Henry ; the highest hope of the 
nation is with the Saxons. Take, therefore, these insignia, the 
sacred lance, the golden bracelets, the royal mantle, the sword of 



919] ELECTION OE HENRY /. 103 

the ancient kings and the crown, and go with them to Henry. 
Make peace with him that you may have him for your ally for- 
ever. For what need is there that you and the people of the 
Franks together shall fall before him? Of a truth, he shall be a 
king and a ruler over many peoples.' " 

Thus Conrad seemed to confess the failure of his policy ; 

whether he believed it to be a false policy or only that he 

^, ^. . had not been man enouofh to carry it out, is not 
Election of . 

Henry I. certain. At all events we see with Henry the 

919-936. Saxon a very different practice, whatever his 

theory of the relation of the royal to the ducal powers may 
have been. He accepted the offered crown and was con- 
firmed at a meeting of the Saxon and Franconian princes. 
The bishop of Mainz was on hand to offer him the sanction 
of the church, but Henry put him aside, with the words : 
" Enough for me that I am raised so far above my fore- 
fathers as to be chosen and called king, through the grace 
of God and your devotion ; let the sacred unction and the 
crown be for better men than I ; I cannot hold myself 
worthy of so great an honor." "And the speech," says 
Widukind, "pleased the whole assembly, and, raising their 
hands to heaven, they kept repeating the name of the new 
king with a mighty shout." It may well be that Henry had 
seen enough of kings crowned and guided by priestly policy, 
and was disposed to try what the support of the fighting- 
men of Saxony, allied with the sound elements of all the 
duchies, would do for the unity of the state. 

Henry's first step was to assert his authority in those 
parts of the kingdom which had taken no part in his elec- 
tion. Supported by Saxony and Franconia he 
the^u^es ^^^ plainly more than a match for any single 
power then in sight. In a rapid campaign he 
entered Swabia, where the duke Burchard surrendered at 
once and was recognized by the king as the head of Swabian 



104 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [920 

affairs. In Bavaria the duke Arniilf at first refused to 
acknowledge the overlordship of Henry, but, after a vigor- 
ous show of power by the king, he too accepted the situation 
and was allowed to keep his ducal name and position. In 
his case we have a record of an express condition of the 
agreement, that he should have the right to appoint the 
bishops in Bavaria. Then Henry turned his attention to 
Lorraine. There, ever since the death of king Zwentibold, 
it had been a matter of great uncertainty, whether the land 
was to be French or German. The French king, Charles 
the Simple, had repeatedly asserted his rights and had had 
a considerable following, but the real forces of the country 
had united around a local family and had looked eastward 
for their support. Even before his election as king, Henry 
the Saxon had been the person to whom they most naturally 
turned. The clergy of Lorraine threw their weight as usual 
against the local powers and in favor of the western king. 

For the moment Henry could afford to wait. He met 
Charles of France in peaceful negotiation, and received 

^ . from him full recognition as king of Germany, 

Lorraine ^ =* -" 

becomes an important fact, for thus the "legitimacy" 

erman. ^£ ^^ ^^^ German kingdom was confirmed by 

the power which had most interest in combating it. For 
seven years yet the full sovereignty of Henry over Lorraine 
was delayed, while the nobles of the land, led by the dex- 
terous turncoat Gilbert, were involved in the endless troubles 
of the French monarchy. At the end of that time, without 
any real fighting, simply by improving his opportunities, 
Henry was able to get Gilbert into his power, and to 
strengthen himself in the overlordship of Lorraine by recog- 
nizing Gilbert as duke of that country. To secure him 
more effectually, he gave him his daughter in marriage, and 
from this moment we may date the organic connection of 
Lorraine with Germany, which was to last for many centuries. 



924] HENRY I AND THE DUCHIES. 105 

Thus, within six years after his coronation, Henry found 
himself the actual head of the German nation. The key to 
„ . . his policy had been to recognize the ducal pow- 
theNew ers everywhere as the necessary centres of local 

mg om. influence, and then to bind them to himself by 
ties of personal interest. They were to be largely inde- 
pendent, but they were to be also, in a sense, royal officials. 
We may fairly think of the German kingdom under Henry I 
as a federation of five distinct stems, each far more con- 
scious of its stem-unity than of its share in the unity of the 
nation, but willing, for the purpose of defense against their 
enemies from without and against each other, to acknowl- 
edge the overlordship of the man who seemed most likely 
to help toward these ends. It is significant that in the 
considerable mass of popular legend which gathered about 
these struggles, the hero is always the defender of local 
rights and the king is always a tyrant ; whereas in the semi- 
official records, from which we are obliged to draw most of 
our information, it is the king who is the divinely-appointed 
father of his country, and the local heroes are rebels and 
traitors. The fact is, we are dealing here with a time when 
rights and privileges were very faintly defined, and when 
constitutional arrangements of the European states were 
only just beginning to take form. 

The chief interest of Henry's reign is in the quite extraor- 
dinary measures taken by him for improving the military 
Henry's Strength of his own dukedom. The eastern 

Defense of frontier of Saxony, along the line of the Elbe 
^^°^y- was exposed to incessant warfare from the 

Slavonic peoples, and the care of this frontier had been at 
once the most anxious problem and the source of the 
greatest power of the house of Ludolf. Saxony in the 
tenth century was a new country, depending wholly upon 
agriculture, almost without large cities, and subject there- 



106 THE ROMAiV EMPIRE ON A GERM AX BASIS. [924-933 

fore to the greatest peril whenever an enemy succeeded in 
getting within its borders. Henry turned his mind during 
a long series of years to the best means of overcoming this 
disadvantage. He did what he could to persuade his 
people to cover the country at convenient points with forti- 
fied places, into which provisions could be brought in case 
of invasion, and where the natural business of market 
places might be transacted. In some districts he provided 
that the fighting men of the open country should be divided 
into groups of nine, of whom one should always be in one 
of these strong places to take in and care for the produce 
sent in by the other eight, while they should meanwhile 
combine to work his land for him. Especial care was 
taken to make this rural " militia " an effective fighting force. 
The immediate incentive to these great exertions was the 
dread of renewed incursions of an enemy as much more 

_ . dano^erous than the neighborino; Slavs, as they 

Invasions ^ ts t:) 1 j 

of tiie were more numerous and less like any of the 

nngrarians. g^j-gpean peoples. We have heard of the Hun- 
garians as allies of king Arnulf in his Moravian wars. 
They were a people quite new to Europe, who during a 
generation past had been moving gradually westward from 
the foot of the Ural mountains, across the steppes of Russia, 
into the lands of the lower Danube. The descriptions of 
them by the Frankish writers sound almost exactly like 
those of the Huns by the Roman historians of the fifth 
century, but there is no reason to believe that they were 
related to them by direct descent. Of the same stock, the 
Finnish-Tartar, they probably were, and they came into 
Europe by the same road which their terrible predecessors 
had followed. 

Like these, also, they were a race of small, active men, 
still in the nomad stage of development, owning great 
wealth in horses and cattle, but whollv unused to the arts of 



9o6] HUNGARIAN RAIDS. 107 

settled life. Like the Huns they spent much of their time 

„^ . on horseback, and conquered their enemies 

Their ' ^ ^ 

Settlement rather by the swiftness of their attack and the 

in Europe. craftiness of their strategy, than by any special 

bravery or discipline. Driven by enemies from behind they 

had forced themselves in like a wedge between the great 

Moravian kingdom on the North and the Bulgarians on the 

South, and had overrun the magnificent grazing country 

along the Theiss and the southern course of the Danube. 

There they settled, and there they are to this day. No 

sooner, however, had they begun to feel at home in their 

new country, than they found themselves tempted to renew 

their former manner of life at the expense of their neighbors 

in all directions. In the summer of 899 we hear of them 

in Italy, plundering and burning throughout the great plain 

of Lombardy, and utterly destroying a considerable army 

got together by king Berengar. 

In the years immediately following they tried their 

strength against Bavaria without definite result, but in 906, 

answering a call of the Elbe Slavs, a great Hun- 

ai s in p-arian force followed the course of that river 

Germany. *=> 

into Thuringia, and laid waste the southern 
portions of the land in the most terrible manner. In the 
following year a great army of Bavarians, led by the mark- 
graf Luitpold, was annihilated, and all thought of driving 
the Hungarians out of their new home was gone forever. 
The only question was whether the Christian powers of 
Europe would be able to confine them within these limits, or 
to defend themselves against their furious raids. From the 
kingdom of Ludwig the Child nothing was to be expected. 
The leaders of the fighting men in Bavaria, Saxony and 
Swabia had opportunities, each in turn, to prove their 
bravery, but without success. Year after year we read the 
same history of endless swarms of Hungarians pouring over 



108 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [933 

all the German lands and returning, laden with plunder and 
captives, to their Pannonian fields. 

The success of these raids is the best proof of how com- 
pletely the ancient military strength of the empire of Charle- 
magne had declined. True, the upper classes 

Hungfarians j^^^ become soldiers and nothina: else, but this 
in Saxony. * ' 

very fact had weakened the defensive power of 

the nation by driving out of military service the great mass 
of the inhabitants, the old Germanic " heerban," with which 
Charlemagne had fought his wonderful campaigns. The 
first man to perceive this evil and to try to remedy it was 
king Henry. When, in 924, a Hungarian army came pour- 
ing down the Elbe valley again, he wisely kept out of the 
way of a regular battle, and sought to gain time. An 
accident helped his purpose. A chief of the Hungarians 
fell into the hands of the Saxons, and in return for his sur- 
render, they gained a truce for nine years on payment of an 
annual tribute, and the Hungarians withdrew. These nine 
years of peace furnished Henry the opportunity for those 
military reforms we have already noticed. In this interval 
he had occasion to try the strength of his army against the 
eastern Slavs, and the great victory of Lenzen on the lower 
Elbe raised the courage and the hopes of Saxony to a height 
they had never before reached. 

The result was that when, in 933, the end of the truce was 
approaching, Henry called his fighting men together and put 
, the question to them whether they should fight 
the Hung-a- or pay. He reminded them that in this interval 
nans. . j^^ |^^^^ ^^ ^^ were, been plundering them, their 
sons and their daughters, to fill the treasury of the Hunga- 
rians. These resources were now at an end and, if the 
tribute was to be kept up, there was nothing for him to do 
but to take the wealth of the churches and hand it over to 
the enemies of God. Upon this the people raised their 



933] THE BATTLE ON THE UNSTRUT. 109 

hands to heaven and swore to stand by the king against this 
most bitter foe. Then came the messengers of the Hunga- 
rians as usual to demand the tribute, and were sent home 
empty-handed. The courage of the Saxons spread even to 
their Slavonic neighbors, so that when the Hungarians, in 
great force, came once more down the Elbe valley, expect- 
ing help from their former allies, the Dalemincians about 
Meissen, the latter openly scouted them, and instead of the 
expected tribute, tossed the carcass of a fat dog into their 
camp. 

The invaders divided into two parties, a western one, 
which, trying to enter Saxony through Thuringia, was com- 
pletely destroyed by Saxons and Thuringians 

Battle on to2:ether, and an eastern one, which marched 
tlie Unstrut. . . 

straight on against the king who awaited them 

near Merseburg on the river Unstrut. Henry knew the 

dread of heavy cavalry, which the Hungarians felt, and so 

sent forward a detachment of Thuringian infantry to draw 

them on. The ruse succeeded ; as soon as the enemy 

caught sight of the heavy squadrons awaiting them in battle 

array, they turned at once in hasty flight, and got themselves 

ofl: so fast that although Henry's riders chased them for 

eight miles they hardly caught or killed a man. The effect 

of this victory was to raise the fame of Henry to the highest 

pitch. The Hungarians gave up their northern raids from 

this time on, and the princes of Europe began to turn 

naturally to Henry as the arbiter of their disputes. Widu- 

kind says that his soldiers saluted him on the battle-field as 

'•''pate?- patriae^ rerimi dominus imperatorque^^'' a suggestion 

doubtless that Henry, though he was never crowned 

emperor, was in fact all which that name implied. 

Three years later king Henry died. A few months before, 

warned of his approaching end, he had called the leading 

men of all the German stems together at Erfurt, and had 



110 THE ROMAA^ EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [936 

asked their consent to the succession of his son Otto as king. 

This consent had been given, but not without bitter feehng 

-^ . . on the part of a younger brother, Henry, who had 

of otto I. raised the somewhat peculiar claim that as he 

had been born while his father was king, and 

Otto while his father was still only duke of Saxony, the right 

of succession belonged to him. In fact there was no right 

of succession, but it is interesting to see these ideas of 

"legitimacy" making their way into the minds of the 

Germans. Everything pointed to the Saxon as the natural 

leader of the nation, but the great question of the future was 

how far he would set himself free from Saxon traditions 

and regard himself as the real ruler of Germany. 

The ceremonies at Otto's coronation in Aachen are worth 

our careful consideration as showing precisely the conception 

^ ^. of the German kinodom which Otto was willinsf 

Coronation * =» 

at Aachen. to adopt and the heads of the stems were willing 
to accept. The choice of Aachen shows in itself 
an intention to connect this new kingdom as closely as 
possible with the traditions of the elder Frankish state. 
Henry had been satisfied with the approval of the Saxons 
and the Franks and had then forced the other stems 
to recognize his authority ; Otto would be satisfied with 
nothing less than a formal recognition by all the Germans. 
Henry had rejected the coronation by a churchman ; Otto 
was willing that the church should take distinctly the leading 
part in his coronation. The ceremony took place in a spot 
the most sacred in the memory of every Frank, the Cathedral 
of Charlemagne. The leading personage was the archbishop 
of Mainz, though the honor was disputed by both the arch- 
bishops of Treves and of Cologne, by the former because 
his see w^as said to have been founded by disciples of St, 
Peter, by the latter because Aachen was in his diocese. As 
the king and his following entered the church he was 



936] ELECTION AND CORONATION OF OTTO I. Ill 

received by the archbishop and presented to the assembled 
princes as " the man chosen by God, nominated by our 
master Henry and now declared king by all the princes," 
then he said, "if this election pleases you, show it by raising 
your hands to heaven." Then the people raised a mighty 
shout, wishing well to their new leader. 

Thereupon the king stepped before the high altar and 
received from the hands of the archbishop the insignia of 
^, the kingdom, which had been laid thereon. As 

Coronation the priest reached him the sword and hanger he 
Ceremony. said, "Receive this sword and with it drive out 
all the enemies of Christ, heathen and evil Christians alike, 
by the divine authority granted to you ; for power over the 
whole kingdom of the Franks is given you by the divine 
will, to the lasting peace of all Christians." Then, as he 
gave him the mantle with its clasps, he said, "The border 
of this mantle, trailing upon the earth, is to remind you that 
however fiery your zeal for the faith may be, you are to 
endure unto the end in preserving the peace." Then, taking 
the sceptre and the staff, " let these be to you a warning 
that you use a fatherly discipline towards all who are sub- 
ject to you ; and above all reach out the hand of pity to the 
ministers of God, to all widows and orphans, and may the 
oil of mercy never be wanting to your head, that you may 
be crowned with an eternal crown both in this life and the 
life to come." After this Otto was conducted to the ancient 
throne in the gallery and there listened to the service of 
the mass. 

From the church the assembly adjourned to the banquet- 
ing-hall of the adjoining palace and there the king was 
served by the dukes of the several stems as his ininistri. 
This was perhaps the most significant part of the whole 
ceremony. The office of the minisiri or miitisteriales 
was one of personal, originally mehial, service about the 



112 THE ROMAN EMPIRE ON A GERMAN BASIS. [936 

person of a lord. It appears from an early date among the 

Germans in a four-fold form. The camerarius (chamber- 

^^ „^ lain) was the servant whose duty it was to pro- 

TheStem- ^ . 

dukes as vide for the night- quarters of his master. 

"Muustn." rpi^g senescalciis (seneschal) had to see that the 
master's table was supplied with food. The pi7icerna (cup- 
bearer) was the waiter at table and finally the 77iarescalcHs 
(marshal) was the master's groom. The very nearness of 
such service to the lord's person gave a character of especial 
honor to it and, of course, the actual duties were soon per- 
formed by servants of the servant. It can hardly have 
been without some sense of its symbolical meaning that 
these offices at the coronation of Otto were performed 
respectively by Gilbert duke of Lorraine, Eberhard duke of 
Franconia, Hermann duke of Swabia and Arnulf duke of 
Bavaria. By this act the Saxon was declared to be the 
overlord of all Germans. "Otto," says Widukind, "having 
honored each one of the princes with a royal gift, dismissed 
them with all cheerfulness." 

Thus at the very outset we see a theory of the new empire 
declared, which was quite different from that of Henry the 
Founder. Under him the kingdom had been little more 
than a loose confederation of separate stems, each under a 
local chief and giving to the central government as much or 
as little support as seemed good to itself. Otto, a stern 
man, filled with a sense of his mission as the restorer of the 
Frankish state, took up the work with the theory that he 
was the real ruler of Germany and that the stems were only 
the organs of the royal power, not its essential elements. 
He would not destroy them, but he would make them his 
'■'■mifiistriy The political history of Otto's reign, the 
most important since the days of Charlemagne, is the 
history of this theory in conflict with that of local 
independence. 



95o] OTTO I AA'D THE DUCHIES. 113 

Hardly had the German princes '■'■ cum omni hilaritate^' 

returned from the coronation at Aachen, when the numerous 

causes of dissatisfaction in the kingdom began 

^^1^1^^^^ to make themselves felt. The king's younger 
to otto I. & J a^ 

brother, Henry, had not forgotten the slight put 
upon him by the election of Otto. There was an elder half- 
brother, Thankmar, son of Henry by a former marriage and 
declared illegitimate by the church, and these family enemies 
were speedily made use of by the heads of local politics as 
rallying-points for an attack. The details of these internal 
quarrels can interest us only as they illustrate the great 
principle we are trying to understand. Suffice it to say, 
that down to the year 950, that is during the first fourteen 
years of his reign, Otto was almost incessantly occupied 
with a series of rebellions against his royal authority and 
that on the whole he succeeded most wonderfully in getting 
the better of all his enemies and in actually changing the 
whole character of the relation between the duchies and the 
kingdom, ^own to his time it is clear that the duchies 
represent an authority derived from within themselves'A 
The dukes are local leaders, belonging to families of long 
connection with the respective territories. Under Otto 
they become the appointees of the king and represent the 
local interest only in so far as this does not conflict with 
that of the central power. 

Only once in the course of this long struggle do we see 
an effort on the part of Otto to take upon himself the ducal 
otto and powers in any district and even there he soon 

the Duchies, found it convenient to depute his authority to a 
new incumbent. The whole story of these years 
is hardly once dignified by a manly, face-to-face fight of any 
one party against any other. It is a wretched story of petty 
squabbling for petty ends, of attempts at assassination, of 
broken oaths and sham reconciliations. Yet in the midst 



114 THE ROMAN EMPIRE OX A GERMAN BASIS. [950 

of it all we see the figure of the king standing firmly by 
what he believed to be his right and coming out in the 
main victorious. At the end of this period of struggle, we 
find Bavaria in the hands of his brother Henry, who after 
leading for ^^ears in every desperate move against him, had 
finally declared himself his faithful ally and kept his faith. 
Swabia had long been ruled by Ludolf, the child of his 
marriage with Edith, daughter of King Edward of England. 
Over Lorraine he had placed one Conrad, of the great Fran- 
conian house, and had given him his daughter in marriage. 
Franconia and Saxony were for the present in his own 
hands. Thus after years of anxious conflict all the duchies 
of Germany were united in the hands of one family. It 
seemed as if the unity of the nation were about to be ful- 
filled by a natural process of inheritance. Even the question 
of the succession in the kingdom had been determined by 
the acknowledgment of Ludolf as heir to the_thrQii£. 



CHAPTER IV. 

DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION OF THE 
PAPACY. 900-963. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

See Chapters II and III. 
MODERN WORKS. 

SiCKEL, Th. Das Privilegium Otto's I fiir die Romische Kirche vom 

Jahre 962, with a facsimile of the manuscript. 18S3. 
Bal<jani, U. The Early Chroniclers of Italy. 1883. A short survey 

of the principal sources of mediaeval Italian history, with many 

characteristic selections. 
MiJCKE, A. Kaiser Otto II und Otto III, in his Erzahlungen aus dem 

Deutschen Mittelalter. 1881. 
Manitius, M. Deutsche Geschichte unter den Sachsischen und den 

Salischen Kaisern (911-1125). 1889. 
VocKENBERG, F. A. Die Entstehung der Deutschen Herzogthumer im 

Anfang des 10 Jahrhunderts. 1869. 
Gingins-La-Sarra, Baron de. Memoires pour servir a I'Histoire des 

Royaumes de Provence et de Bourgogne-Jurane. 1851-53 

We left the papacy at the close of the Carolingian 
period, in the full tide of successful assertion of its rights 

as against all temporal sovereignty. It was 
in 900^^^^^ distinctly acknowledged as the' only true source 

of the imperial power, and it was disposing of 
the imperial title quite at its own will. In the person of the 
great pope Nicholas it had maintained itself as against the 
power of local metropolitans or local synods, and had 



116 PAPAL DEGRADATION AXD RESTORATION. [900 

forced the royal power, as represented by Lothair II, to 
seek its judgment and yield to its decisions. It had put 
itself forward as the only possible political force in Italy 
about which the various powers of the peninsula could 
unite for any semblance of common action, and as the 
leader of Italy it had driven the Saracen from his most 
important strongholds. As the direct agent of Christian 
missionary effort it had connected itself wdth the most 
distant frontiers of Europe, and had made a vigorous, 
though unsuccessful fight to win from the Greek church the 
allegiance of some of its most important province"-^ 

It seemed as if there could be nothing to prevent the 
papacy from becoming the arbiter of all European affairs. 
That it did not become so at once was due to 
Decmie^ ^ ^ ^^^ failure to recognize wherein the true sources 
of its power lay. If the papacy was to be a 
universal power, it seems clear now that it ought, by every 
means in its power, to have maintained its universal 
character. Especially, it would seem, ought it to have 
combined as many and as wide interests as possible in its 
support. If it was to control the whole Christian world, 
then obviously the whole Christian world ought to have 
had a share in its action. In other words, the local 
character of the papacy, as the Roman bishopric and as 
chief of the Roman territory, ought to have been kept in 
every way secondary to its universal character as head of 
Christendom. The only way to do this under the political 
conditions of Europe in the year 900 was for the papacy to 
connect itself inseparably with the only other power, which 
could be thought of as representing this universal idea, 
namely, the empire. But the only terms upon which the 
papacy had been willing to treat with the empire had been 
that it should absolutely control it. It had so far succeeded. 
It had weakened the empire into nothingness, but precisely 



^ 



896] T/I£ PAPACY A LOCAL POWER. 117 

in that way it had undermined its own best source of 

strength. 

The alternative was that the papacy itself became a local 

power, and entered upon a stage of its history which has 

justly been considered as the lowest through 

The Papacy a ^j-^j^.}-^ \^ j^^s gygj- been called upon to pass. 
Local Power. ^ . ^ 

The emperor Arnulf had been crowned in the 

year 896 by the pope Formosus, a man of force and 

character, who had long been distinguished in the service 

of the Roman church, and had kept himself steadily on the 

side of those who believed that the best hope of the papacy 

lay in an intimate union with the German kingdom. This 

had naturally brought upon him the enmity of the other 

Roman parties, especially of those families among the city 

nobility which thought of the papacy only as n convenient 

means of advancing their own interests. At his death, a 

few months after the coronation of Arnulf, we see the affairs 

of the city falling at once into the hands of these factions, 

and their momentary victory was the signal for the most 

disgusting episode in the whole history of the papacy. 

A pope rushed hastily into office, died in a fortnight. 

Another, set up by the Roman factions, lent himself to the 

unheard-of scheme of putting the dead Formosus 
Forino°sus°^^ through the forms of a trial for usurpation. 

The corpse of the pope, already eight months in 
the grave, was dug up again and dragged to St. Peter's 
before a synod of the Roman clergy. Dressed in full 
pontificals it was placed upon the papal throne and fur- 
nished with an advocate for its defense. . The advocate of 
the new pope, Stephen, then caUed upon the dead man to 
declare why he had dared to ascend the throne of St. Peter 
while still holding the office of bishop of Tortus. The 
advocate of Formosus made what feeble defense he dared, 
but the assembly, representing the voice of God on earth, 



118 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION [898 

declared him guilty and deposed him from ofhce. The 

papal garments were torn from the corpse, the three fingers 

with which he had given the divine blessing were chopped 

off, and the body, dragged out of the church by the heels, 

was thrown into the Tiber. This ghastly incident is a 

sufficient comment upon the moral conditions of the city of 

Rome, and upon its capacity to furnish the Christian world 

with a leader in the things of highest import. 

The next pope lived four months, and the next twenty 

days. By this time a reaction had set in, and the body of 

_ . - , - Formosus, fished out of the Tiber by some fisher- 
End of the ' ■' 

itaUan men, was reburied in St. Peter's with all honors. 

Emperors. Pope John IX saw his only hope in connection 
with the Italian empire, feeble and local as that now was. 
Since the withdrawal of Arnulf from Italy, the young 
Lambert, son of Guido of Spoleto, had kept on playing the 
emperor there, and could at least serve the purpose of 
acting as a foil to the pope against his Roman enemies. A 
synod of 898 declared that in future no papal election 
should be valid without the approval of the emperor, and 
confirmed Lambert in his title, adding, also, that the elec- 
tion of the '' barbarian " Arnulf should be considered null 
and void. Pope and Italian emperor went at length into 
the miseries of the eternal city, and seemed in hearty agree- 
ment as to the remedies. It seemed for a moment as if a 
new life might be infused into Italy by this combination of 
her highest spiritual with her most active and promising 
temporal power. Spoleto and Rome combined might have 
dictated to Italy both in the north and in the south. 
These flattering hopes were destroyed, however, within a 
few months by the accidental death of Lambert 

Death of while hunting. Instantly the rival northern 

Lamhert. * / 

power, Berengar of Friuli, appeared as the 

claimant for the vacant throne. He got possession of 



c. 9io] FAILURE OF THE ITALIAN EMPIRE. 119 

Lombardy, but failed to find the support he needed for the 
empire. The party of Spoleto, allied with the powerful 
Marquis of Tuscany, called upon the young Louis of 
Provence, son of Boso, to take the imperial crown, and he 
was in fact crowned at Rome in the year 901. Evidently 
he was utterly powerless to repress the frightful tumults 
which followed each other in such rapid succession that the 
scanty records of the time cannot keep up with them. In 
the eight years preceding 904 eight popes had risen and 
fallen, most of them by the most dreadful forms of violence. 
We search in vain for any thread by which to follow this 
tangled history. Only one thing is clear, that out of the 
mist of conflicting parties certain great families were rising 
steadily into prominence, and among these the house of 
Tusculum, a family owning rich estates in the neighborhood 
of Rome. 

The poor emperor Louis, attempting to get a foothold in 
Lombardy, was attacked by Berengar, seized, blinded and 

sent home to Provence, a pitiable figure. The 
at the Head papacy, reduced to a purely worldly institution, 
of Italian justifies its existence only by taking a sort 

of lead in worldly affairs. John X, the most 
able pope since Nicholas I, made a renewed attempt to 
strengthen his position by supporting an Italian emperor. 
Berengar, summoned from the north, was crowned with all 
solemnity, and we are fortunate enough to have preserved 
to us a description by an eye-witness of the coronation 
ceremonies. The first result of this new union was a bold 
assault upon the remaining Saracen stronghold in the south, 
near the mouth of the Garigliano. All the leading princes 
of Italy sent considerable contingents to the papal-imperial 
army, and even the Byzantine emperor, moved by the 
prayers of the Italians, contributed a strong fleet. The 
general of the united army was Alberic of Spoleto and 



120 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION [916 

Camerino, at that time the leading man in Roman politics, 
but the real soul of the undertaking was the pope himself. 
In this skillful diplomat, purchasing the aid of the Italian 
princes with shrewd concessions of land, reconciling their 
differences and leading them into battle, we have no sugges- 
tion whatever of the vicar of Christ, whose function was to 
make peace on the earth. The outcome was 

916 

a complete overthrow of the Saracen power in 
middle Italy, but the papacy had lost in spiritual prestige 
what it had gained in safety and in temporal power. 

If we can trust the historian Liutprand, bishop of 
Cremona, who found little good in his own day excepting in 
Ri e f the ^^ princes whom he was paid to flatter, the 
Tuscuian circumstances of John's accession to the papacy 
^ ^' were of the most disgraceful sort. The chief 

charge against poor Formosus had been that he had allowed 
himself to be transferred from one bishopric to another in 
defiance of a well-recognized principle of the church. To 
enforce this principle John IX had made a special decree 
forbidding such transfers in future. In spite of this, how- 
ever, John X, while still bishop of Ravenna, had become a 
candidate for the bishopric of Rome, and Liutprand can 
explain this in no way but by saying that he had become 
the lover of a Roman lady, Theodora by name, who could 
not bear to have him so far away as Ravenna, and had 
therefore secured his election as pope. The interest of this 
story is in its suggestion of how the politics of Rome were 
being managed at this moment. Theodora was the wife of 
a person named Theophylactus, a name showing, as do 
almost all those which come to the surface of affairs, a 
Greek origin, and suggesting thus a leaning among the 
Roman nobility towards the fashions and traditions of 
Constantinople, rather than towards those of the Frankish 
empire, or even of the more remote Roman past. This 



c. 92o] THE TUSCULAN PARTY. 121 

Theophylactus appears as "Consul" or "Senator" of the 
Romans, names which have only a feeble connection with 
the times of the Republic, and mean nothing more than 
the chief of Roman politics for the time being. The word 
"senate," in its old sense of a representative body acting 
for the state, has disappeared, and is used only loosely for 
the whole body of the Roman nobility. This nobility 
evidently controlled the public life of Rome, and was 
engaged at this time in trying to get the control of the 
papacy into its hands. It was unquestionably a wild, 
tumultuous society, given over to pleasure, and we shall not 
therefore be surprised to find it so largely under the influ- 
ence of certain capable women that this incident has given a 
name and a character to the whole period in Italian history. 

The central figure in this group of the Roman nobility 
is Marozia, daughter of Theodora and Theophylactus. 
Through her three husbands, Alberic of Spoleto, Guido 
of Tuscany and Hugo of Provence, king of Italy, she 
succeeded, during a period of nearly twenty years, in 
making herself at least the most prominent person in the 
affairs of Rome. Alberic first comes into notice as a very 
capable soldier, who was the mainstay of pope John X in 
his defeat of the Saracens in 916. From that time on we 
hear of him as Consul Ro?nanorum, and in a sense tyrant 
of the city to the exclusion of the pope, until in some 
faction fight he was beaten and disappears from history, 
leaving a young son of the same name, who was to continue 
his father's policy with more skill and success. 

While the affairs of Rome were thus passing into the 
The Burgun- hands of energetic and ambitious laymen, the 
dian Kings shadowy kingdom and empire of Berengar in 
Rudolf, 924- the north were rapidly nearing their end. Dis- 
'2^' contented nobles in Lombardy returned once 

again to that policy of the Italians which was to be their 



122 PAPAL DEGRADATION' AND RESTORATION. [924 

bane for a thousand years, and sought in foreign inter- 
ference a remedy for evils they were powerless to mend 
of their own action. They invited king Rudolf of Upper 
Burgundy to come over the Alps and accept the 
crown of Italy. He came, tempting the fate 
which had sent his neighbor, Louis of Provence, back from 
just such an attempt to pass the rest of his days in blind- 
ness and misery, Berengar, accused of having invited the 
Hungarians into Italy, was murdered at Verona ; but, in 
spite of this advantage, Rudolf was unable to maintain 
himself, and gladly listened to a much more attractive 
offer. Lower Burgundy, known also as the kingdom 
of Provence or of Aries, had come practically into the 
power of its chief nobleman, Hugo, a grandson of king 
Lothair II and that Waldrada who had kept all the 
powers of western Europe by the ears in the effort to 
secure for her children recognition as the lawful heirs of 
their father.^ This Hugo, without regard to the rights 
of the blinded king Louis, proposed to Rudolf, that if he, 
Rudolf, would give up his claim to Italy, he should have 
the southern Burgundy as well as the northern, as com- 
pensation. By accepting this offer Rudolf secured a 
comparatively safe possession in place of an extremely 
uncertain one, and laid the foundation for the future 
united kingdom of Burgundy. 

With the death of Berengar the imperial name is sus- 
pended for more than a generation. The substitute for it 

1 The following table shows the relationship of the leading actors in 
Italian affairs just before the coming of Otto : — 

K. Lothair II of Lorraine = Waldrada (concubine) 

I Berengar 

I) Theobald of Provence,= Bertha= II) Adalbert of Tuscany (Emp. 915) 



III) K. Hugo= Marozia= II) Guido. Lambert. Irmengard= Adalbert = I) daughter 
of Italy I of Ivrea 

Pope John XI 
(son of M. and Sergius III (?) ) 



926-932] THE BURGUNDIAN PARTY. 123 

in Italy was the royal title, in the hands of a series of 
foreigners and natives, no one of whom succeeded in gain- 
ing anything like a real sovereignty in the peninsula. Hugo 
Hugo of Pro- of Provence came into Italy under unusually 

vence ing favorable circumstances. He was welcomed by 
of Italy. •' 

926. his half-sister, Irmengard of Ivrea, a woman who 

seems to have had as much influence over the politics of 
the North as Marozia over those of Rome, by a faction of 
the restless nobles of Lombardy and by the pope, John X, 
who was now plainly at a disadvantage against the faction 
of Marozia. This faction had become especially dangerous 
through the marriage of its head with marquis Guido of 
Tuscany, the most powerful territorial lord in Central Italy. 
The city of Rome came entirely under the control of this 
combination, the pope was imprisoned and even before his 
death, a rival pope was set up in his place. John X died in 
929, a man, who, if a pope had been a secular ruler only, 
would have deserved one of the highest places in the 
record of great pontiffs. 

After a papacy of which we have no record beyond the 
name of the pope, we come to a most singular situation. 
The faction of Marozia saw its opportunity to place in the 
papal chair the son of this woman and, perhaps, a former 
pope, Sergius III. The opportune death of her second 
husband left her free for a new alliance and there, waiting 
for just such a chance to get a firm foothold in Rome, was 
Marriage of ^^^^ Burgundian Hugo. He had got the crown 
Marozia and of Italy without difficulty, and there can be little 
ugo. 9 2. (jQubi; ^2,\. his ambition was reaching after the 
empty name of emperor. Hugo paved the way by captur- 
ing and blinding his half-brother, Lambert, now Marquis 
of Tuscany, and his lawful wdfe was already dead. A 
canonical hindrance to the marriage, since Hugo and Guido 
were sons of the same mother, was easily overcome, for the 



124 PAPAL DEGRADATIOX AND RESTOKATIOX. [932 

divine power which could dispense from all rules was in the 
hands of a boy of twenty, son of the eager bride ! The 
marriage took place, though plainly against the will of the 
patriotic Roman party. Hugo had been making enemies at 
a great pace, by giving the lands and offices of Italy to the 
Burgundian adventurers in his following, and how little he 
trusted the Roman people is seen by the fact that he did 
not venture outside of the Castle of St. Angelo, where 
the wedding had been celebrated. The only real interest of 
this affair to us is that it brings out into his first prominence 
the man under whose guidance Rome was to enter upon 
a new era of prosperity and comparative decency of 
administration. Alberic, the son of Marozia, compelled 
to serve as a page in his step-father's following, and in- 
sulted by Hugo for some trifling cause, put him- 
Sou of self at the head of that party which we have 

Marozia. ventured to describe as the " Roman " and 
roused the city to a storm of indignation against the rule of 
the foreigner. The success of this movement shows that 
its force had long been gathering. Hugo was driven from 
the city before he could get the imperial crown which his 
papal step-son would surely not have denied him. Marozia, 
overwhelmed in the misfortune of her new husband, was 
imprisoned by order of her son and henceforth disappears 
from history. The pope, John XI, was taken to his palace 
of the Lateran and kept there in honorable confinement. 

Thus, in a moment, as it were, the city of Rome found 
itself freed from the presence of a king of Italy, who would 

. „ ^,. soon have been emperor, and from the control of 
A Republican ^ ' 

Revival at a pope in its temporal affairs. One of those 
^°™^" singular waves of republican enthusiasm, called 

up by the memory of her mighty past, which have so often 
swept over the eternal city, seems to have carried away 
her people at this crisis. They seem to have believed for a 



93-^954 ] 'f'^^l'- ''h'OMAN'' J'AA'7'V.~A/J>/':A'/C. 1125 

moment that they were to be forever free from the control 
of any power outside their own walls and indulged in 
extravagant displays of patriotic zeal. A system of govern- 
ment with Alberic at its head was put into operation and 
actually maintained during a period of twenty-two years 
of peace and order. 

As to the details of this administration we are very much 
in the dark. Coins and documents give us proof that 
Alberic Alberic was the recognized head of affairs and 

Princeps et ^^^ known as '■'■ Prmceps atgne omniiun Roma- 

Senator. ^ ^ . 

932-954. noruf?i Senator J' The former title of '' Patri- 

cius," which seemed to imply a kind of dependence upon 
some higher source of authority, is no longer in use. The 
foundation of this new power was the right of the Roman 
people to choose their own ruler, as against the right of any 
one whomsoever, emperor, king or pope, to designate him. 
We learn that Alberic devoted himself especially to a new 
organization of the city militia and that he was able, by 
means of these efforts, to ward off successfully several 
attacks upon the city by king Hugo. We know that he 
found support in his administration from the active monastic 
reform which, starting in the monastery of Cluny in Bur- 
gundy, had already begun to make itself felt in Italy. It 
will be our purpose later on to trace this movement in 
detail ; the recognition of it by Alberic as a means of bring- 
ing something of order and decency into the society of 
Italy is a proof of his far-seeing prudence and his thoroughly 
earnest desire for the common good. Alberic's relation to 
the papacy reminds us of that originally held by the ruler of 
Rome, the ancient Roman emperor, toward the 

Alberic and ^^^.j i^j^j-^Qps^ He controlled and protected the 
the Papacy. ^ ^ ^ 

papacy without oppressing it. His half-brother, 

John XI, lived on for five years after the coming of Alberic 

and seems to have adapted himself to the situation. He 



126 PAPAL DEGRADA TIOiV AND RESTORA TION. [937 

was succeeded by Leo VII, undoubtedly put forward by 
Alberic and also willing to serve his plans. Leo was a 
Benedictine monk and it was through him that Alberic 
hoped with reason to carry out his plans for monastic 
reform. 

Three succeeding popes fill out the time of Alberic's life. 
They all appear to have been his appointees, and to have 
carried out the will of his government. Only at the close 
of Alberic's administration do we begin to see traces of a 
revival of those relations of the papacy with the countries 
of Europe, which were the expression of its universal char- 
acter. So long as Alberic's influence was predominant the 
papacy was scarcely more than the bishopric of Rome. 

If now we turn from Rome once more to take up the 
thread of events which led to the coming of king Otto, we 
find the clue in the many-sided activity of king 
f^^^'pso^^^ Hugo. A clever, absolutely unscrupulous poli- 
tician, this Burgundian noble could see no 
obstacle to his advance without an effort to remove it. 
Again and again he led his followers against Rome, only to 
be beaten back by the skill and bravery of Alberic. Not 
an Italian prince that did not, at one time or another, feel 
the weight of his hand. Where violence and cunning 
would not work, he had tried the value of family alliances. 
To Alberic he had given his daughter ; to the young 
Berengar of Ivrea, grandson of the emperor Berengar, and 
now coming to the front as the leader of the Lombard 
nobility, he gave his niece. In Burgundy itself, where he 
had not yet succeeded in gaining the royal power, he 
followed the same policy. At the death of king Rudolf in 
937, he hastened into the country and won for himself the 
hand of the widowed queen, and for his son Lothair that of 
her daughter, the afterwards famous queen and empress 
Adelaide. Rudolf's son Conrad put himself, or was taken, 



940-950] SCHEMES OF KING HUGO. 127 

under the protection of king Otto of Germany, and thus 

the evident plan of Hugo to make himself king of Burgundy 

was defeated. 

The result of all Hugo's deep-laid schemes was that he 

raised up for himself a crop of enemies, who were only 

waiting: for a favorable moment to combine 
Italian ^ 

Combination against him. That moment came when it 
against Hugo. |3g(>^j^g ^\^^^ ^q ^j^g southern princes that a 

really great power had arisen in the far North to which 

they might look for at least a change of masters. Berengar 

of Ivrea, warned by the fate of his elder brother, whom 

Hugo had put out of the way, took refuge at 

Otto's court, and watched for his opportunity. 

In 945 he appeared in Italy at the head of an armed force 

and was welcomed with such enthusiasm by the cities and 

nobles of Lombardy, that he seemed on the 

verge of success. Hugo, driven to extremities, 

played his last card by putting forward his son Lothair, and 

himself abdicating all his rights in Italy. The Italians, 

proving the words of Liutprand, ^''Italienses autem sejnper 

gemifiis uti dommis, ut alteram alterius terrore coerceant,^^ 

tossed up their hats for Lothair also, and there was nothing 

for the two rivals but to fight out their claims. 

For five years this state of anarchy and confusion con- 
tinued, until the sudden death of Lothair left Berengar free 
actually to assume the crown, and at the same 

950 . 

time to secure the coronation of his son Adalbert. 
The Burgundian party in Italy was at an end ; its only 
representative was Adelaide, Lothair' s widow, and her 

Berengar sought to win for his son. It seemed 
into Italy ^^ ^^ ^^^ moment had arrived when that party, 
l)y Various which we ventured to call the "national," 

might have strengthened itself throughout the 
peninsula, and, in alliance with the vigorous government 



128 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [951 

of Alberic in Rome, have given order and peace to all 
Italy. Instead of this, all the best elements of the land 
turned again towards the North. Adelaide, imprisoned by 
Berengar, escaped and sent a piteous appeal to Otto of 
Germany, who had already shown himself the defender of 
her father's house in Burgundy. The pope Agapitus, 
alarmed for the safety of the papal lands on the Adriatic, 
which were falling into the hands of Berengar, called upon 
the German king to defend the rights of St. Peter, and the 
discontented elements of Lombardy, a constant quantity in 
every political combination, joined in the same appeal. 

Otto, on his side, was, as we saw in the previous chapter, 
now for the first time in position to accept the invitation. 

He found himself in the year 950 practically in 
9Si°"^ command of all the resources of Germany. Its 

several duchies were in the hands of men upon 
whom, he believed, falsely as it proved, that he could count 
for loyal support. Of all these heads of provinces none 
was more strongly bound by every tie than his son Ludolf, 
duke of Swabia. While Otto was still considering the 
chances, Ludolf, apparently without the knowledge of his 
father, crossed over into Italy, and tried to gain a foothold 
for himself as representative of the king. His eifort was 
entirely unsuccessful, and he could only wait for the arrival 
of Otto. In September of 951 the German king set out on 
his march over the Brenner, and without opposition of any 
kind reached Pavia, the Lombard capital. Berengar took 
himself out of the way, and Otto did not pursue him. In 
Pavia, where Otto spent the winter, we find him making 
grants of land and privilege in Italy, quite as if he had 
already been acknowledged king of that country. 

The ex-queen, Adelaide, had meanwhile escaped from her 
imprisonment, and after a series of romantic adventures had 
found a refuge under the care of the bishop of Reggio. 



95^] OTTO I TV ITALY. 129 

Otto, whose first wife Edith, daughter of king Edward 

the Elder of England, had lately died, sent messengers 

to her, not only assurins; her of his protection, 
Marriage ' ■' . . . 

of Otto and but offering her at the same time his hand in 
Adelaide. niarriage. The wedding festivities took place at 
once in Pavia and, if fidelity and party loyalty were not 
unknown words in the politics of the day, we might con- 
clude that this alliance was a useful incident in overcoming 
the hostility of those who still clung to the fortunes of the 
Burgundian kingdom. The truth is that there were but two 
agencies by which any power could command allegiance in 
Italy, force and bribery. Otto was free with the latter and 
had shown that he could apply the former if necessary. 

Otto had gained a wife and the crown of Italy ; but the 
greatest still awaited him. Ambassadors were sent from 
Pavia to Rome to negotiate for the imperial 
reachRlme. ^rown, but, though the pope Agapitus had 
joined in calling Otto into Italy, he returned a 
flat refusal to this request. Historians have seen, probably 
with reason, in this refusal of the pope the policy of Alberic, 
the same which he had maintained as against king Hugo, 
to allow no power whatever to put itself in position to 
claim any sovereignty over the city of Rome. It has been 
assumed that Otto eagerly desired to renew the imperial 
name ; but it is certain that he was not prepared to sacrifice 
to this ambition any of the more immediate interests of his 
German kingdom. He yielded to circumstances, which he 
might perhaps have controlled, and withdrew from Italy, to 
wait another ten years before gaining his point. 

In this interval we find Otto occupied, as he had been 
during all the early years of his reign, in putting 
S^ermany. ^^wn with a strong hand the efforts of the stem- 
duchies to overthrow the royal power. Legend, 
taking up the romantic life of his son Ludolf, makes him 



130 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION [933-955 

the centre of these efforts. Jealous, it was said, of his 
father's success in winning the hand of the young queen 
Adelaide, who would have been a much more suitable 
match for himself, Ludolf drew about him all the restless 
elements of German politics, especially his brother-in-law 
Conrad, duke of Lorraine, and the powerful Frederic, arch- 
bishop of Mainz. The result was a conspiracy which 
seemed, during two years, to threaten the very existence 
of the revived kingdom. It is the best proof of the great 
resources of Otto that he was able to overcome this obstacle 
also. He did it with the help of his faithful Saxons and of 
his brother Henry of Bavaria, converted at length from his 
bitterest enemy to his truest friend. 

The chronicles are full of these family quarrels and local 

skirmishes, but it does not appear that they had any very 

Ne In a- disastrous effect upon the life of the people at 

sions of the large. We speak of them as indicating the 

ungarians. pj-Q^^^gg ■\^j which an actual royal power was 

gradually built up. Quite different, however, was the effect 
of the Hungarian assault, which seems to have been largely 
brought upon Germany by the lack of united action among 
its political leaders. Since the great repulse by king 
Henry in the year 933, the Hungarians had never again 
ventured with success into the North of Germany. We 
hear of them rather in the northern plain of Italy and in 
the great region lying southward from the Danube as far as 
the head of the Adriatic. Westward through Bavaria they 
had poured again and again, especially in the early years of 
Otto's reign, overrunning the country as far as the heart of 
France. Rheims, Sens, Orleans, had seen them before their 
walls, and whatever was not defended by the strongest forti- 
fications, especially monasteries with their stores of wealth, 
fe . an easy prey. The monastic chronicles of the time are 
full of dismal tales of plunder and personal abuse, and 



954] HUNGARIAN INVASIONS. 131 

documents show us how these pious foundations besieged 
the kings for a renewal of privileges, the record of which 
had vanished in the storm of the invasion. 

From France one stream of the marauders had crossed 
the Alps by the western passes and forced its way south- 
The Great ward, beyond Rome, as far as Capua, In all 
Assault directions we hear of the terror inspired by these 

"^ ' raids and of traitorous alliances entered into by 

one and another chieftain of the Christian states with the 
heathen enemy against the foes of his own household. In 
no case do we hear of vigorous or united resistance, while 
on the other hand we get a very clear impression that the 
Hungarians chose for their attacks the regions where in- 
ternal political difficulties seemed to promise them the 
greatest ease of conquest. The revolt of the son and 
son-in-law of Otto was one of these opportunities. In the 
summer of 954 the rumor began to spread that the Hun- 
garians in unprecedented numbers were moving up the 
Danube. Before Otto, coming from Saxony, could reach 
them, they had already passed on to the westward, handed 
along, so we are assured, by Ludolf and Conrad into the 
lands of Lorraine and France. We hear of no resistance, 
but the princes of Germany seem to have found in this 
ever present danger at last a motive for an alliance, if not 
for union. 

The winter of that year was passed in negotiations, which 

ended in the reconciliation of Otto with his sons. The 

experiment of a family compact to control the 
A New Deal ..... , . 

in the local spirit of independence m the stem-duchies 

Duchies. ^a.s a failure, and Otto recoo:nized this bv de- 

954-955. . . ^ ^ 

privmg both sons of their ducal powers. At 
the diet of Arnstadt, Swabia, taken from Ludolf, was granted 
to a count Burchard, representing a local family, and in 
Conrad's place in Lorraine, where ^Otto's brother, the bishop 



132 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [955 

Bruno of Cologne, had been formerly declared duke, the 
leading influence, though not yet the title, was in the hands 
of a powerful local noble, Reginher. The archbishopric of 
Mainz, lately vacated by the death of the slippery Frederic, 
was given to a natural son of Otto. If the Saxon family 
could not control the duchies, at least they might usefully 
hold the three great Rhenish archbishoprics. Otto's brother 
Henry, who had remained faithful to him during the whole 
of this trying time, was left in possession of Bavaria. 

That the motive for this reconciliation, at least on the 
king's part, was the defense of the country against the Hun- 
garians, is clear, and the wisdom of his policv 
The Battle » ' ' r j 

on the "^V3-S shown when in the following summer the 

LecMeid. common enemy, stronger than ever, started to 
repeat the invasion of the previous year. The 
estimates of the chroniclers that their numbers exceeded 
100,000 may not have been an exaggeration. Sa3^s one, "so 
enoi:mous were their numbers that they boasted that unless 
the earth should swallow them or the heavens fall upon 
them, no power could conquer them." Up the Danube 
through Bavaria they crossed the Lech, poured into Swabia, 
and began the siege of Augsburg. The narrative of the 
noble resistance of the city reminds us of the story of the 
siege of Paris by the Northmen in 886. Here too the 
bishop is the central figure of the defense. The city was 
not strongly fortified and barely succeeded in turning back 
the first shock of the assailants. The bishop, who had been 
present at the fight, spent the rest of the day and the night 
in herculean efforts to strengthen the city walls, not for- 
getting to send his nuns in procession through the streets 
and into the churches, to call upon the Holy Virgin for 
her assistance. Even more effectual perhaps was the 
reluctance of the enemy to attack a walled town, for 
the defenders were encouraged when they saw the Hun- 



955] BATTLE ON THE LECHFELD. 133 

garian leaders trying to drive their men with whips up 
to the assault. 

Suddenly the news spread in the Hungarian camp that 
the king was approaching with a great army. Otto had set 

out from Saxony with no very great force, but, 
The Royal fortunately, the contingents of the duchies, with 

the exception of Lorraine, were in motion and 
joined him as he moved rapidly towards the beleaguered 
city. For the first time a true German army was united for 
a great common undertaking. Yet even now the order of 
battle shows that the real animating spirit was the pride of 
local patriotism. The royal army was divided into eight 
columns, of which three were Bavarians, the fourth Franco- 
nians under the lead of Conrad, the real hero of the fight, 
the fifth picked men of every stem under the king himself 
and doubtless his own Saxons, the sixth and seventh 
Swabians under count Burchard, and the eighth a picked 
corps of a thousand Bohemians, to whom was committed 
the guard of the rear and the baggage. Otto found the 
Hungarians encamped on the left bank of the Lech and at 
once led his army across, hoping to force a battle ; but the 
enemy, always cautious about entering into a general engage- 
ment, sent a strong force across the river and then back 
again in the rear of the Germans, where they suddenly fell 
upon the baggage and the Bohemian corps. The latter 
were driven into confusion, and the day would have been 
lost from the first if Conrad with his troop of wild horse- 
men had not thrown himself into the thick of the fight and 
scattered the Hungarians in utter rout. 

Then the king, calling upon the whole army and sending 
forward the banner of St. Michael, led the assault upon the 
enemy in front. The weight of the German charge threw 
the light cavalry of the Hungarians into confusion again 
and the battle became a wild pursuit. "The Lech, red- 



134 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [955 

dened with blood," says a poet of the day, "carried to the 
Danube the news of this Parthian defeat." The German 
army scattered wide over the land in headlong chase, cut- 
ting down the enemies wherever they could be found and 
reserving only the leaders for a more terrible fate. The 
Hungarian "king," two of their chief duces and a multi- 
tude of other chieftains were handed over to duke Henry, 
who promptly hanged them all at Regensburg, not as 
honorable enemies, but as the common foes of humanity. 

The battle of the Lechfeld was for the peoples of the 
East as great a deliverance as had been that of Poitiers for 

those of the West. Its effect upon the Hun- 
Effect of 
the Battle garians was to convmce them that they stood 

no chance whatever against a well-organized 
army, and from this time we hear of them no more as a 
terror to civilization. They give up entirely their raiding 
habits and turn themselves to a settled agriculture in the 
splendid country which they had chosen for their home. 
Within two generations they allow themselves to be Chris- 
tianized and enter definitely the family of European nations. 
The lesson to Germany was even more important, if only it 
could have been thoroughly learned. The battle was the 
proof that all the misery and loss brought upon the west of 
Europe during more than two generations by these Hun- 
garian raids had been an utterly needless waste. It might 
all have been spared if one tithe of the energy which had 
been misspent in petty quarrels for land and rights had 
been devoted to planting firmly in the path of the in- 
vaders one such army as had now met ^them in the plain 
of Augsburg. 

For Otto personally the prestige of the victory was of 
immense value. From this point on we see him distinctly 
rising above the contending forces of Germany and becom- 
ing in reality, what he had thus far been only in name, the 



955] INCREASED POWER OF OTTO T. 135 

head of the German people. For the first time he was now 

able to turn his attention to the idea of the empire. In 

the year before the victory of Otto over the 

Plans for Hungarians, the Roman Alberic had died, after 
the Empire. *=" ' 

an administration of twenty-two years. That 

was, in Roman affairs, a very long period. It had accus- 
tomed the Romans to the idea that they were capable of 
managing the interests of the Roman state, including the 
papacy, without the help of an imperial ally or head. Dur- 
ing this time the papacy had been clearly under the direction 
of the chief of Roman politics, and there had been, so far 
as we can see, hardly a protest against this situation. If 
there had been enough political virtue in Rome to provide 
as successor to Alberic a man like him, capable of continu- 
ing his policy, the situation might have been prolonged 
indefinitely. Instead of this, the Roman people quietly 
allowed Octavian, the son of Alberic, a boy of sixteen, 
educated as a priest, to succeed to his political office and, 
within a year, to get himself elected pope as well. 

Doubtless this combination of offices seemed to promise 
a long lease of power to the popular party, but it at once 

_ , . produced a series of complications. Was it that 

Octavian as ^ ^ 

Pope joiinxn, the head of the state was pope ? Or was it that 
' "' ■ the pope was head of the state? Upon the 

answer to this problem would depend the future relation of 
the secular with the spiritual power. It was perhaps this 
conflict of two persons in one man which induced Octavian 
to change his name at his election and call himself John XII, 
an example imitated by most succeeding popes. The his- 
tory of the pontificate of John XII is the proof that the 
truest interest of the papacy lay, not in the possession of 
temporal power, but in close alliance with, and spiritual 
control over, the temporal powers. Whichever side of his 
functions he tried to emphasize, he was sure to call out a 



136 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [961 

vigorous opposition from the other, and he was far from 
being the man to meet such opposition vigorously. 

The result was that John XII soon found himself obliged 
to look about for defense outside of those resources which 
ott 11 d ^'^^ been sufficient for the truly Roman policy 
in by Pope of Alberic. His chief enemy was Berengar of 
-'° ^ * Ivrea, who, in spite of his formal vassalage to 
king Otto, had gone on in his plan of reducing Italy under 
his control. Against this enemy the pope appealed to 
Otto. Already in 956 it had become clear that Berengar 
had violated his feudal obligations, and Otto had sent his 
son Ludolf into Italy against him. The fruits of this 
expedition had been lost by the sudden death of Ludolf, 
and for four years nothing further had been done. The 
appeal of John XII was fortified by the request of a multi- 
tude of Italian princes, lay and clerical, and fell in, of 
course, with Otto's natural wish to gain for himself the 
imperial crown. 

The year following the invitation to Italy was spent by 
Otto in regulating the affairs of Germany. We have to note 
. especially the coronation of his son Otto as king 
in Germany, in Germany, an act by which the question of the 
' * succession was to be put beyond the reach of 

accidents. At a diet at Worms, the approval of the German 
princes for this step was secured, and the coronation was 
carried out with all solemnity at Aachen by the three arch- 
bishops of Treves, Cologne and Mainz, the uncle, the brother 
and the son of Otto. The guardianship of the seven-year- 
old boy and the management of the government were en- 
trusted to Bruno of Cologne and William of Mainz. The 
defense of the northeastern frontier was left in the trusty 
hand of Hermann Billing, duke in Saxony. The south- 
eastern border, freed at length from the terror of the Hun- 
garian, was further protected by the reestablishment of the 



962] OTTO I EMPEROR. 137 

Bavarian Ostmark, out of which the future archduchy of 

Austria was to grow. 

With Germany thus provided for behind him, Otto 

crossed the Brenner in the summer of 961, and passed 

^^ T • , without resistance into the plain of Lombardy 
The Imperial ^ -' 

Coronation, as far as Pavia, where he remained unmolested 
'^^* by Berengar through the winter. Negotiations 

for the imperial coronation were begun early and give us 
interesting information as to the views of the two parties. 
Otto, on his side, promised in advance by the most solemn 
oaths not to infringe upon any of the papal rights in Italy 
and, whomsoever he should make king of Italy, to see to it 
that he too should observe the same respect. The reception 
of the king in the city of Rome was as friendly as could be 
wished ; but how little confidence Otto had in the sincerity 
of the Romans, is shown by his command to his sword- 
bearer : " While I am praying in St. Peter's keep your 
sword close to my head. When once we reach Monte 
Mario again, you shall have time to pray as much as you 
like." The same caution is doubtless to be seen in the 
shortness of the imperial visit. The coronation followed 
immediately upon the solemn entry into the city. Both 
Otto and Adelaide received the imperial title, after it had 
lain dormant for thirty-seven years and had, in fact, ceased 
to have any real influence upon European affairs for more 
than a century. 

At once all those questions as to the relative rights of 
papacy and empire, which we considered in the Carolingian 

times, arose as^ain and demanded a solution. 
Papal and ' ^ 

Imperial The oath of Otto before the coronation was the 

^^ ^* expression of his intention to protect the papacy 

in its position as administrator of the Roman state, but on 
the other hand there were several points in the relation 
of the two powers which he proposed to make clear. The 



138 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [962 

good will of the pope was shown by a series of decrees 
relative to matters in the German church which were of 
little weight to him, but meant a great deal to the emperor. 
The chief of these papal sanctions was in regard to the 
establishment of Magdeburg as an archbishopric and of 
Merseburg as a bishopric subject thereto. This was a 
scheme which Otto had long had in mind, but which had 
been bitterly opposed by the archbishopric of Mainz, since 
all the lands which should be brought under the direction 
of Magdeburg must necessarily be drawn from its own con- 
trol. The especial value of the new foundation was as a 
starting point for missionary effort towards the east. 

Once again w^e come to a monumental document, in 
which we find a definition of mutual rights as we did for 
The Reman the last time in the Cimsfitiitio Lotharii of 
"Constitn- g^ ^j^g famous constitution of Otto I, now 
otto I. believed to be a genuine document, goes back 

to the donation of Louis the Pious in 817, which was itself 
a confirmation of previous alleged grants of Charlemagne 
and Pippin and confirms these in most particulars. It 
is clear from this that Otto had no thought of diminishing 
in any degree the independence of the papacy ; but he goes 
on in the second part of his grant to define the rights of the 
empire in dealing with papal elections. Pvcferring expressly 
to the document of 824, and to the evils which have come 
upon the Roman people through the oppression of the 
popes, he goes on: — "The whole clergy and nobility of 
the Roman people shall bind themselves by an oath that 
the future elections of the pope shall be carried out canon- 
ically, and that he who shall be chosen pope shall not be 
consecrated until he shall have promised in the presence of 
our legates, or of our son, or of a general council {iifiiverse 
genera lifaf is), such a full satisfaction as was voluntarily 
promised by our venerable spiritual father Leo." By going 



963] OTTO I SUPREME IN ROME. 139 

back to these Carolingian documents, it was made plain 
that both papacy and empire desired to connect the revival 
of their relation, not with the feeble imperial fiction of 
recent times, but with the tradition which had already 
shaped itself in the time of Louis the Pious. 

The test of the new relation came as soon as Otto's back 
was turned. His immediate duty was to dispose of king 
_ . , Berengar, who still maintained himself in almost 

61*6 ACil DC" 

tweenotto impregnable fortresses in the north of Italy. 
and John xn. ^j^-j^ j^^ ^^^ sitting before the last of these 

mountain retreats of Berengar in the summer of 963, dis- 
quieting reports began to come in from Rome. It was 
plain that the reckless youth, who had got what he wanted 
from Otto, was returning to the wild excesses of life and the 
neglect of his clerical functions which had been charged 
upon him before. Otto waited until the autumn, left a 
sufficient force to keep Berengar in check and appeared 
in Rome. Not this time as a suppliant for any favor, but 
as the judge, who drew his commission from the imperial 
name. 

By virtue of his imperial authority he at once called a 
synod in the church of St. Peter, at which we find not only 

. , the higher clergy and nobility of Rome, but also 

John XII, Germans, Lombards and Tuscans. It was an 
^^^' assembly which might well claim to speak the 

voice of the universal church. In the absence of the pope, 
members of the Roman clergy brought forward against him 
a series of charges so incredible that one wonders how they 
could have borne him as long as they did. Murder, perjury 
and the plunder of churches were the least of them. In 
the name of the council Otto sent word of these charges to 
the pope, promising him safe-conduct if he would present 
himself and free himself from them by his oath. John's 
reply was a brief threat, that if the assembly should try to 



140 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [964 

put any one in his place he would excommunicate them all. 
Thereto the council replied that if he would come and free 
himself, they would continue their obedience ; if not, they 
cared nothing for his excommunication. The messengers, 
finding the pope gone a-hunting, returned without a r^ply. 
Upon this, the emperor, addressing the council, called 
upon them to give their decision, and the council begged 

him to deliver the church from this monster of 
^ ^*It^ ^ iniquity. The actual choice of a pope was left 

to the assembly, which unanimously voted for 

a Roman named Leo, a protoscrinai'ius or notary, whose 

only fault seems to have been that he was a layman. This 

defect was promptly remedied, however, by putting him 

through all the lower clerical orders, from ostiarius up, in 

one day, an utterly irregular proceeding, by which the 

imperial party gave a handle to their opponents for future 

trouble. 

Doubtless it had helped to condemn the pope in the 

emperor's judgment that he had, during the previous months, 

«^^ - TT been in close relations with the party of Berens^ar. 
otto in upper . . 

Italy, The fall of pope John brought with it also the 

963-964. defeat of Otto's political rivals. Berengar and 

his family were captured by Otto's forces in the north and 
sent as prisoners up into Germany, to appear no more in 
Italian politics. Otto himself, after a three months' visit, 
left the capital and took measures to strengthen himself in 
the neighborhood. 

No sooner had he left the city than the party of John 
began to pluck up courage, and within a few weeks Rome 
. was again in their hands, the imperial pope 
and Death of driven into exile and his chief supporters impris- 
•^"^"^ • oned, mutilated and scourged. A synod called 
to justify the restoration did as it was told. The interest 
of this assembly for us is that it was made up wholly of 



964] THE EMPIRE CONTROLS THE PAPACY. 141 

Romans, and unquestionably represented those principles 
of Roman independence which the house of Alberic had 
maintained. If this party had put forward suitable papal 
material, it might well have continued the worthy tradition 
of the days of Alberic. The miserable rake whom it sup- 
ported, pursuing the wife of a gentleman in the suburbs, 
was suddenly stricken with apoplexy and died, without even, 
it was said, receiving the last unction of the church. 

Again the Roman party put forward their man, this time 
a really respectable clergyman, and sent messengers to Otto 
TheE ■ b^ggi^g him to drop Leo and recognize their 
controls the candidate. This proposition seems to have 
apacy. struck Otto as absurd and impertinent. His 

answer is suggestive. " When I drop my sword I will drop 
Leo." The sword of the emperor was the basis of the 
papal power. His honor was committed in Leo's cause, 
and the excellence of the Roman choice could not affect 
him. Excommunication and a brave resistance were equally 
ineffectual. Otto sat down to the siege of Rome in all 
form, and so thorough was the blockade that in a short 
time the city was at the last extremity of hunger. It 
surrendered and delivered its unfortunate pope, Benedict V, 
to the mercy of the conqueror. A Lateran synod undertook 
the work of judgment. Benedict was declared guilty of 
treason to the emperor and to the pope whom he had sworn 
to support, deprived of his papal vestments and banished. 

At this highest point in its development the empire of 
Otto suggests a comparison with that of Charlemagne, and 
may, perhaps, best be described by that com- 
withCharle- P^^rison. Although Otto unquestionably felt 
magne's himself the successor of the great Charles, and 

though writers from that day to this have taken 
all pains to make the connection evident, still, if we examine 
the details, we shall see that there was little except the 



142 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTORATION. [964 

theory to carry out the resemblance. The empire of 
Charlemagne rested, in the first place, upon the whole 
Frankish people ; that of Otto found its only material 
support in the resources of the German nation. The 
character of universality, which had come naturally to 
the earlier empire, because the holder of it was actually 
ruler of all Germanic Christianity on the continent, was 
wanting to that of Otto. He represented only a fraction of 
the Christian-Germanic world, that fraction, to be sure, 
which had shown itself the most vigorous and which gave 
the best promise of permanence ; but after all there was 
something absurd in calling any person emperor who had 
only a local backing. This element of the absurd was 
never wanting, even in the times of the greatest energy 
of the mediaeval empire. Charlemagne was the successor 
of a line of kings reaching back through at least three 
hundred years of unbroken development, and as he was 
the originator of a new tradition, so was he also the com- 
pletion of an ancient political ideal towards which the 
Frankish policy had from the first been tending. Otto 
was a Saxon thane, raised to an apparent superiority over 
his fellow Germans, but forced from first to last to fight 
for supremacy against all the powerful local traditions of 
the nation. Charlemagne had gained his great military 
and political successes as the head of the Frankish 
" Heerban," which answered his summons by virtue of a 
feeling of national allegiance. Otto was the head of a state 
rapidly becoming feudal, dependent for every enterprise 
upon the personal good-will of the men over whom he tried 
to exercise control. The influence of Charlemagne was the 
result of institutions which found in him their best expres- 
sion ; what influence Otto had on the course of events 
depended upon his momentary ability to control affairs by 
force. Charlemagne, often by a mere show of power, had 



965] OTTO I AND CHARLEMAGNE. 143 

broken down every form of organized local resistance ; Otto 
had been forced to see local powers taking on permanent 
forms mider his very eyes, and had been able only to direct 
these local movements by actual military force, employing 
one against the other as their mutual jealousies gave him 
opportunity. 

The last ten years of the great Otto's reign are of interest 
chiefly for his dealings with the papal power and for the 

definite establishment of the Saxon house in its 
p**aip 1' royal position. At the death of Leo VIII in 

965, the Romans made no attempt to evade the 
imperial claims, but sent up into Germany to suggest that 
Otto might now consent to the restoration of the banished 
Benedict. Fortunately this impediment to the imperial 
plan died also just in time to save a conflict, and the 
Romans accepted Otto's candidate, a respectable Roman 
clergyman — none the less respectable, apparently, because 
he was the son of the bishop of Narni — and made him 
pope under the name of John XIII. Then again the same 
old story. A Roman faction rebelled against the imperial 
pope and drove him out of the city. John found a retreat 
with a power which was just beginning to make itself felt 
as a force in Italian politics, — the duchy of Capua, in the 
hands of a prince of Lombard descent and name, Pandulf. 
This man with his brother Landulf in Benevento, controlled 
pretty much the whole of central Italy. They stood in a 
vassal relation to the Greek empire, which, it must not 
be forgotten, still held the southeastern coast of Italy 
and was at this time in the hands of a surprisingly 
vigorous line of rulers. It w^as a problem of the greatest 
interest to all the powers of the peninsula whether these 
Lombard princes would attach their fortunes to the declin- 
ing influence of Constantinople, or to its rising and ever 
more threatening rival, the Saxon conqueror. 



144 PAPAL DEGRADATION AND RESTOKATION. [968 

Otto, as soon as he heard of the Roman troubles, set out 

again for Italy and crossed the Alps for the third time just 

otto I and ^^ Pandulf had escorted the pope back into 

the Lombard Rome. Never yet had the fact of the German 

^'"^^^^* control been so clearly emphasized. Otto, in 

conjunction with his pope, sat in judgment on the rebels 

and condemned them to punishments as brutal as they were 

grotesque. For the moment there was no doubt who was 

master in Rome. Pandulf, as a reward for his service to the 

pope, was invested by Otto with the marks of Spoleto and 

Camerino and definitely became the "■ man " of the empire. 

His brother Landulf in Benevento followed the same policy. 

Thus an issue with the eastern empire was clearly made 

and the challenge was at once accepted by Constantinople. 

Otto had already despatched an embassy to the East to 

ask for the hand of a Greek princess for his son Otto, and 

this embassy met in Macedonia a Greek army on the way 

to Italy by land to act with a fleet already sent over to 

punish the rebellious Lombard princes and to save the 

Greek cities of the coast from a possible attack by them 

and their new master. The Greek emperor, Nicephorus, 

plainly not anxious to make so long and desperate an 

expedition, agreed to give up the attack and to send over 

the princess, provided Otto would consent to give up all 

claims upon Greek Italy. 

We hear no more of a Greek land expedition to Italy, 

but an embassy from Nicephorus in the spring of 968 

refused both to give up his claim to Apulia and 
Negotiations , , . . 

with the to consent to the proposed marriage. Upon this 

Eastern Qtto and his Lombard allies moved into Apulia 

IT m i\\ fZl 

and began the siege of Bari. At the same time 
he sent to Constantinople the famous bishop of Cremona, 
Liutprand, whose report, filled with bitter complaints of 
bad treatment and with a very amusing account of his 



/^ 



CHAPTER V. 

EUROPE AT THE YEAR lOOO. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Gerbert, Epistolac ; in Gerbert's works, ed. OUeris, 1867; also ed. 

Havet, 1889. 
Recueil des chartes de I'abbaye de Cluny. 4 vols., 1876-88. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Franck, a. Gerbert. Etat de la Philosophie et des Sciences au x'e 

siecle; in his Moralistes et Philosophes. 1872. 
Wernkr, K. Gerbert von Aurillac ; die Kirche und Wissenschaft 

seiner Zeit. 1878. 
Champly, H. Histoire de I'Abbaye de Cluny. 1866. 
Sackur, E. Die Cluniacenser bis zur Mitte des elften Jahrhunderts, 

vol. i, 1892. The most recent, and, as far as it has gone, the most 

complete narrative of the Reform. 
I!ucherat, Fr. Cluny au onzieme siecle. 1873. 
EiCKEN, H. Die Legende von der Erwartung des Weltuntergangs und 

der Wiederkehr Christi im Jahre 1000; in Forschungen zur Deut- 

schen Geschichte, xxiii, 1883. 
Roy, Jules. L'An Mille. 1885. 

Orsi, p. L'Anno Mille; in Rivista Storica Italiana iv, i. 1887. 
HiRSCH, S. Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich II, 

1862-74. 

Until within a few years it was generally believed that 

luring the tenth century the mind of Europe was laboring 

mder a profound and universal conviction that the year one 

housand would bring some tremendous catastrophe to 

inankind. The phenomena of this period, the spread of 



150 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [9S3 

the ascetic idea, the great progress of the Church in wealth 
and in power over the human mind, the slow advance of 
learning, have all been explained as consequences of this 
" millennial " notion. Recent inquiries, however, made quite 
independently one of the other, have shown that this 
notion, though doubtless existing here and there, was far 
from having the decisive influence formerly ascribed to it. 
It was probably only one sign among many of that vague 
sense of impending ruin which is a part of all early 
Christian thought, and which is undoubtedly one of the 
powerful springs of the ascetic life. Looked at in this way 
the year one thousand forms a convenient epoch at which to 
gather into one point of view the various forces tending 
towards the great conflict of the Empire and the Church. 

The value of the new arrangement of the eastern border- 
lands under Otto II was shown during the early years of 

his son and successor, Otto III. In spite of 
ott^^m^ ° ^^ well-defined principle of election, the Saxon 

house had a sufficient hold upon the nation to 
insure the succession of Otto at the age of three. Henry 
the Quarrelsome of Bavaria, set free from his confinement 
at the death of Otto II, at once seized the person of the 
boy, declared himself regent, and began to take steps to 
gain support as king. The Saxon princes, however, stood 
firm in support of Otto and succeeded in placing him under 
the regency of his mother, Theophano, who, from this time 
until her death, showed herself a woman of extraordinary 
capacity and character. The chief effort of this regency 
was spent in maintaining the eastern frontier against a 
general rebellion of the Slavonic tributaries. The new 

system of marks worked well, and the line of 

991. 

defense was not permanently broken, though the 
Slavs were for a generation almost free from German con- 
trol. After the death of Theophano the young king 



996] YOUTH OF OTTO III. 151 

was for a time under the control of the aged empress, 

Adelaide and the archbishop of Mainz, and then began 

his independent government at the age of sixteen. Our 

interest in Otto III is chiefly concerned with 

996 

his conceptions of the nature of the empire and 

his relations to the great ascetic movement which was 

slowly moulding the character of European society. 

Charlemagne had built his empire upon the Prankish 

nation. Otto I, taking up the Carolingian tradition, had 

felt himself first a German and secondarily a 
Otto III con- ^, _ xxT 1 -1 T • 1 • • 

trastedwith K-oman. Otto ill, born m the purple, mhentmg 

Charlemagne on both sides imperial traditions, brouo;ht up by 
and Otto I. , . ^ . • i i i , r i 

a mother whose education had been that or the 

Byzantine court, began, as soon as he could plan for himself, 
to think of himself first of all as Roman emperor, head of 
the Christian world, and commissioned to carry out this 
universal idea of empire. Again, Charlemagne, much as he 
desired to encourage the higher interests of civilization, was 
himself first a soldier, educated but little, and spending the 
greater part of his activity in strengthening the material 
foundations of his state. Otto I was, so far as we know, 
entirely without education, a sturdy fighter, basing his con- 
trol of church and state upon his good sword. Otto III 
was educated in the best learning of his day, his mind filled 
from his earliest youth with the stories of the ancient Roman 
greatness. 

Hardly was he firm in the royal seat when this tendency 
began to make itself felt. Once again the point of attack 

was the Roman papacy. The affairs of Rome 
Local Cor- . . r r j 

ruption of Since the time of Otto I had been going steadily 

the Papacy from bad to worse. All the evils to which the 
after Otto I. .... . . „ • 

papal administration was specially exposed had 

shown themselves active, and Rome had forfeited the re- 
spect of the Christian world by a display of ignorance and 



152 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [996 

baseness quite as bad as that in the times before Alberic. 
Again a Roman party, under the lead of the Crescentian 
family, had tried to get affairs into its hand, but there is no 
trace of the strict organization and the well-defined prin- 
ciples which had marked the reign of the earlier and more 
capable tyrant. The feeling of the North about Rome is 
well expj-essed by the protest of French clergymen at a 
Synod of Rheims (991) against an appeal to Rome. 
"Rome," said Arnulf of Orleans, "is the seat of every 
iniquity. While learning and piety are being cultivated in 
all the nations of the North, Rome is sunk in ignorance and 
sin." Gerbert, afterwards pope Sylvester II, declared at 
the same time that Rome could claim control over the 
church only when it was itself an example of holiness ; when 
Rome becomes the enemy of God, men may withdraw their 
allegiance from it. 

This low condition of the papal institution, joined with 
his own imperial ambitions, was the excuse for the first 
ott III Italian expedition of Otto III. The pope, John 

summoned XV, driven from the city in faction fights, called 
°"^^* upon him for help, but died before Otto could 
reach him. Otto received the news of the pope's death at 
Pavia, and soon after at Ravenna an embassy of Roman 
citizens came to ask him to name a new pope for them, — 
evidently a German or imperial party, hostile to the close 
local interest represented by Crescentius. In response to 
this suggestion Otto proposed his cousin Bruno of Carinthia, 
Nominates ^ youth of perhaps twenty-five. For the first time 
a German a Northerner, a German, was proposed as the 
°^ * successor of St. Peter. He was sent on to Rome 

with the deputation, and the forms of an election were gone 
through with. The immense importance of this step seems 
hardly to have been felt at the time. It was the clearest 
declaration yet made that the papal office was not a purely 



999] OTTO III AND THE PAPACY. 153 

Roman one, but representing, as it claimed to do, the uni- 
versal church, must henceforth be open to any Christian man. 
In taking the name of Gregory V, the young German 
seemed to connect himself with the fairest traditions of the 
papal history. For a moment it seemed as if 
Gregory V, Empire and Papacy, in the hands of these two 

996-999. ^ . 

enthusiastic youths, united by ties of blood and 
the closest sympathy in their aims, might be about to realize 
the ideal of the mediaeval world, each standing for the high- 
est expression of authority in the Christian community, and 
yet each aiding the other to carry out its peculiar aims. 
Their first act was the coronation of Otto as emperor, their 
second, the trial of Crescentius and the leaders of his party. 
The sentence of banishment against Crescentius was, at the 
request of the pope, remitted, and Otto hurried back to 
Germany to renew the defense of the eastern frontier. He 
had hardly left the city when the Crescentian party was 
again on its feet and had strength enough to drive the pope 
out of Rome. Again Otto crosses the Alps, restores his 
pope, besieges Crescentius in the castle of St. Angelo, 
captures him and puts him to death as a traitor. 

Upon the death of Gregory V within a few months the 
emperor again put forward his man, the Frenchman, Gerbert 

of Aurillac, formerly archbishop of Rheims, the 
^ .jj ^ most famous scholar of the day, versed, as few 

others in Europe were, in all the ins and outs of 
papal and imperial politics. This Gerbert, scholar, arch- 
bishop, abbot, statesman, tutor of kings, and finally pope, 
represents better than any other man the peculiar life of 
the millennial period. Born of low family in Auvergne, 
placed in a monastery at an early age, he was taken out of 
the monastic life by a gentleman whose attention had been 
attracted by his brightness, and given the chance to study 
in the best schools then attainable, especially in the Chris- 



154 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [999 

tian parts of Spain. His learning in the mysterious science 

of mathematics earned for him the uncanny reputation sure 

to follow exceptional and original talent in the Middle Ages. 

As archbishop of Rheims, the principal see of France, he 

found himself thrown into the bitter party conflicts between 

the principle of " legitimate sovereiprntv " in the 
Gerbertas r 1 & t> ;• 

Defender of persons of the last Carolingians and that of the 

the "Galilean elective rio-hts of the French nobility as shown 
Liberty." . . . . ^ 

in the elevation of rival kings, Eudes of Paris, 

Rudolf of Burgundy, and finally of Hugh Capet. Probably 
discerning from the beginning where the future of this 
problem lay, Gerbert -threw himself, heart and soul, into the 
Capetian cause, and suffered the consequences in the loss 
of his position and in exile from France. It was while 
engaged in these conflicts that he was led into the declara- 
tions against the Roman papacy, which we have already 
noticed. His letters written at this time show the strongest 
feeling in favor of that principle, to be known as the 
"Galilean liberty," which, not only in France, but also in 
every other country of Europe, was to make the independ- 
ence of the national church, as against the papal control, the 
rallying-point of a truly national spirit. 

Gerbert's relations with the rising Capetian house had 
thrown him, also, into connection with the Saxon rulers of 
Germany. In the last days of Otto I he had been well 
received at court, and this favor, continued by Otto H, had 
procured for him a rich Italian abbey, and made him thus a 
prince of the empire. Drawn back to France at the acces- 
sion of Hugh Capet, he had been rewarded for his services 
with the archbishopric of Rheims. 

Once more involved in conflict, both with the papal power 
and with the political opponents of king Hugh, he was forced 
to give up his see, and again turned for support to the 
German house. His connection with Otto III begins 



999] GERBERT as' POPE SYLVESTER II. 155 

when the lad was just entering upon his independent 

government. All those extravagant ideas of 
Gertoertas r . . . 

Pope Sylves- imperial power, which lay in the blood and train- 

terll. inor of Otto, were now encouraged bv his relation 

999-1003. . o y 

to this, the most famous scholar of the day. The 
exiled archbishop became the tutor of the young king, was 
made archbishop of Ravenna, and, upon the death of Otto's 
first papal experiment, Gregory V, was put forward as his 
successor. As Sylvester II, Gerbert had a brilliant oppor- 
tunity of carrying into effect those ideas of the papacy in 
its relation to the local powers within the church, which 
he had asserted while fighting the battles of the Galilean 
liberty. Far from this, however, he made himself at once 
the champion of the papal supremacy over all local organi- 
zation. The conception of a thoroughly Roman emperor, 
finding a response in the ardent imagination of Otto III, 
was but the counterpart of an equally Roman conception of 
the papacy. Never, since the days of Nicholas I, had there 
been more vigorous assertions of papal rights. 

As regarded France all fears of papal revenge were set at 
rest by an immediate restoration of Gerbert's former enemy, 
the archbishop Adalbero, to the see of Rheims. In the letter 
making this restoration we find this fine bit of sophistry : 
that as the removal of Adalbero had not been sanctioned by 
the papal approval — which approval was necessary for any 
such action — therefore it implied no contradiction that the 
pope now declared this removal invalid, and restored the 
archbishop to all his former rights and privileges. 

Immense gains to Christianity on the eastern border 

raised the papal supremacy again in the eves of 
Spread of Ro- , , i t. • ^ , , . ^ 

man Christi- the world. Durmg Otto's last journey to Ger- 

anity toward many, in the winter of looo-iooi, he visited at 
the East. . 

Gnesen m Poland the grave of his intimate friend, 

the bishop Adalbert, who had been martyred as a missionary 



156 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [looo 

among the heathen Prussians. Received here with the 
utmost splendor by the Polish duke Boleslaw, he had dis- 
tinguished this vassal of the empire in every way ; had, 
perhaps, even remitted a portion of his tribute and, most 
important of all, had raised Gnesen to the rank of an arch- 
bishopric with a diocese including all the present and 
future conquests of the powerful duke. This elevation of 
a new archbishopric was possible only through the support 
of the papacy, since it interfered with those rights of 
supremacy already claimed and exercised by the great 
Saxon see of Magdeburg, just as, in the days of Otto I, the 
foundation of Magdeburg had been possible only with the 
alliance of the papacy against the vested interests of Mainz. 
Still more important in its effects upon the future of 
Christian Europe was the admission of Hungary into the 

„, . . . family of Christian states. Since the final 
Christiani- ^ 

zationof repulse of the Hungarian raids in the year 955, 
Hungary. there had been a steady progress of these bar- 
barians of the steppes toward a more orderly method of life 
and government. Two agencies had been active in this 
progress, the development of a strong princely house and 
the gradual advance of Christianity. Here, as in the 
German states, a new political order had been possible 
only by the leadership of a family which showed itself 
capable of leading, and especially of putting itself in har- 
mony with the evident tendencies of life within its sphere of 
action. The dukes of Hungary during the latter half of the 
tenth century had been profiting by the example of that 
German political development we have been following, and 
by the year 1000 had come to the point of definite alliance 
with the system of western European states. 

The missionary efforts in Hungary had gone out as well 
from the eastern as from the western Church, so that it is 
not a mere accident that the new state turned rather to 



looo] CONVERSION OF HUNGARY. 157 

Rome than to Constantinople for its organic connection. 

In the year looi the duke Waik, who had previously married 

„ the sister of Henry of Bavaria and had been 

Hungrary ■' 

made depend- baptized with the name Stephen, sent a request 
entonRome. ^^ Rome that he might be received into the 
Roman communion as king of Hungary, and that the 
definite organization of the Hungarian church with the 
archbishopric of Gran as its head, might be sanctioned by 
the papal consent. Of course the request met with the 
most enthusiastic welcome. The pope sent to the duke a 
royal crown which to this day forms a part of that with 
which the kings of Hungary are crowned. The new king- 
dom was accepted on condition of vassalage to the Roman 
see ; the archbishopric of Gran was constituted at the 
expense of Passau, and the valley of the Danube was opened 
to the free passage of Christian pilgrims from all parts of 
Europe. 

This passage of pilgrims to the East had been increasing 
with the growth of the ascetic spirit. It had come to be 
one of the favorite means by which a man sought to estab- 
lish that right relation between himself and his God, 
which the church doctrine declared to be forfeited by sin. 
Nothing tended perhaps more strongly than these pilgrim- 
ages to call the attention of Europe to the holy places of 
the East, which had been connected with the life of Jesus 
and with the early history of the Christian church. The 
outcome of this thought was to be, a hundred years later, 
the mighty impulse of the Crusades. It is worth our notice 
here that the thought of a holy war originated with the man 
who forms the natural centre of the millennial period. We 
have a letter of Sylvester II in which he speaks in the name 
of the desolated church of Jerusalem to the church universal. 
He enumerates the claims of the holy city to the reverence 
of Christians, and finally summons the church to rise as the 



158 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [looo 

soldier of Christ and deliver her from the burden of the 
infidel, under which she is groaning. We have no evidence 
that the pope pushed this matter any further, but the fact 
remains that in this conception of the pope as the standard- 
bearer of western Europe in a holy war against the Moslem, 
we have the clearest view of him as the single power ca- 
pable even of conceiving such a union of forces in a great 
common undertaking.-^ 

We have already referred to those conceptions of the 
imperial power in the mind of Otto III, which form the 
The Imperial "^^^^^^^ counterpart to Gerbert's interpretation 
Theory of of the papacy. The defeat of the popular party 
^^ ^^ ' in the person of Crescentius, and especially the 

elevation of Gerbert to the papacy, were the signal for the 
embodiment of these ideas in definite form. The key-note 

1 Geiberti epp. 219. 

Ex persona Ilierusalem devastatae universali Ecclesiae. 

Ea quae est Hierosolymis universali ecclesiae sceptris regnorum 
imperanti. 

Cum bene vigeas immaculata sponsa Dei, cujus membrum me esse 
fateor, spes mihi maxima per te caput attollendi jam pene attritum. An 
quicquam diffiderem de te, rerum Domina? Si me recognoscis tuam 
quisquam ne tuorum famosam cladem illatam mihi putare debebit ad se 
minime pertinere, utque rerum infimam abhorrere ? En quamvis nunc 
dejecta, tamen habet me orbis terrarum optimam sui partem. Penes 
me prophetarum oracula, patriarcharum insignia. Hinc clara lumina 
mundi apostoli prodierunt, hie Christi fidem reperit orbis terrarum, 
apud me Redemptorem suum invenit. Etenim quamvis ubique sit 
divinitate, tamen hie humanitate natus, passus, sepultus, hinc ad coelos 
elevatus. Sed cum propheta dixerit : Ej'it scpidcJn-Jim ejus gloriosum, 
paganis sancta loca subvertentibus tentat diabolus reddere inglorium. 
Enitere ergo, miles Christj, esto signifer et compugnator, et quod armis 
nequis, consilio et opum auxilio subveni. Quid est quod das aut cui 
das? Nempe ex multo modicum, et ei qui omne quod habes gratis 
dedit, nee tamen ingratus recepit. Etenim hie multiplicat et in futuro 
remunerat. Per me benedicit tibi ut largiendo crescas et peccata 
relaxat, ut secum regnando vivas. 



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looo] JVEIV THEORY OF THE EMPIRE. 159 

of Otto's imperial reforms is sounded in a dedicatory epistle 

in which Gerbert presents to him a philosophical treatise 

'■' de rationali, etc." Gerbert has prepared this treatise, he 

says, lest Italy may suppose that the "sacred court" is 

slumbering in dullness {torpcre), and lest Greece may boast 

herself to stand alone in imperial philosophy and in the 

power of Rome. "Ours," he exclaims, "ours is the Roman 

empire ; our might is given by Italy, fertile in fruits, by 

Gaul and Germany, fertile in soldiers, nor are the mightiest 

realms of Scythia wanting to us. Ours art thou, O Caesar, 

emperor of the Romans and Augustus, thou, born of the 

loftiest blood of the Greeks, art superior to the Greeks in 

power ; thou rulest the Romans by the right of inheritance^ 

thou surpassest both in talent and in eloquence." 

The most significant words in this address are " by right 

of inheritance." So far had the Caesar madness already 

£:one that the imperial youth and his tutor could 
A New ^ . 

Notion of the forget, what no other party in the West was 

Empire. likely to forget, that the real claim of the empire 

rested upon nothing but the power to enforce it by the 

sword. The day was never to come when the series of 

splendid delusions, by which the papacy intrenched itself 

in the allegiance of Europe, could be matched by a similar 

series in support of the empire. The pupil of Gerbert did 

his best. Such an empire as he claimed must have a capital, 

a thing which all his predecessors, from Charlemagne on, 

had got along without. That capital must, of course, be 

Rome. A Frankish or a Saxon nobleman, raised upon 

the shields of his equal followers remained, even after his 

coronation by the pope, a popular ruler, easily accessible, 

distinguished ordinarily but little, if at all, from the circle 

of his peers. His most fitting palace was his tent ; his 

judgment-hall was the spot whither he happened to be 

carried by the stress of war. His officials were the simple 



160 EUROPE AT THE YE AR] 1000. [looo 

''ministers," who had once been his body-servants and who 
now, in his larger state, became simply the, h^ds of the 
departments into which the still very informail hjisiness of 
the court natm"ally divided itself. \^ 

None of these things would do for the son of those men, 
who by this very simplicity of power had given him the only 
Imitation of ^^^^^ foundations of success. He took to him- 
Byzantine self a splendid palace on the Aventine hill. He 
orms. dressed himself in the long, flowing robes of the 

Byzantine court. As " sacred emperor " he made access to 
himself possible only through a formal series of officials. 
He dubbed the officers of the court with the soundingr titles 
of the Byzantine ceremonial. " Logothetae,'' '' protoscrinarii,'' 
'■'■ protospatharii^'^ ^'- praefedus iiavalis " (chief officer of a navy 
which did not exist) and a host of others replaced the simple 
titles of previous reigns. 

The administration of public affairs in the city of Rome 
was placed in the hands of a double set of officers, partly 
papal, partly imperial, the theory of a papal executive, with 
support from and appeal to imperial authority, being in form 
maintained. Gerbert had given to the young emperor the 
key-note of these reforms ; Sylvester soon saw that they 
implied a dangerous superiority of the imperial over the 
papal idea. Otto was generous in confirming to the papacy 
all the lands which it claimed by virtue of former grants, 
but still the kind of an empire he had in mind was incon- 
sistent with those extravagant conceptions of papal inde- 
pendence which were taking shape definitely in the mind 
of Sylvester. 

We have looked at these imperial ideas only to convince 
ourselves that they were a mere splendid dream, 

A Fictitious ^^ggj^ upon theories, not on facts. Every ele- 
Romanism. ^ ' -' 

ment of the actual political situation was opposed 

to them. They roused for the moment a certain enthusiasm 



D02] COLLAPSE OF OTTO IJI'S EMPIRE. 161 

a the excitable Roman population, but the instant that Otto 
showed any intention of carrying out his theory into action, 
the same Roman party, which had tossed up its hat for him. 
turned against him and, scarcely established in his Aventine 
, alace as the centre of a great world-empire, he found him- 

elf driven out of his capital and a wanderer on the face of 
the earth. 

The German princes, more especially the German bishijps, 

/ere beginning to look with suspicion upon a policy which 

seemed to neglect Germany in an extravagant 

a!!*" J,'^'''°* devotion to Italy. The same kind of factional 
Otto's Plans. ■' 

opposition we have already seen so often began 
to show itself. It became evident that the eriipire had no 
strength to spare in vague and distant undertakings, but 
needed it all to keep itself above water at home. Otto III, 

lied with religious enthusiasm bordering upon madness, 
betook himself to Ravenna and gave himself up to the 
influence of the hermit Romuald. Instead of rallying his 
forces for the recovery of Rome, or marching straight back 
as his grandfather w^ould have done to reconquer, sword in 
hand, the wavering allegiance of Germany, he spent his 

ays in fastings and chastisings, until it was too late. Once 
more he moved languidly towards Rome and sat down witJy 
an insufficient army in the neighborhood. Here he was 
attacked by the deadly Italian fever and died in the Vv'inter 
of 1 002, before he had reached his twenty-third year. 
Sylvester survived him just a twelvemonth. With them dis- 
appeared forever the extravagant conception of the Hoh 
Roman Empire they had tried vainly to realize. It was to 
be the work of later emperors to give this abstract conceptior- 
a practical working form, adapted as well as might be t'j 
actual conditions. 

At the moment of Otto's death, negotiations for 

carriage v/ith a Byzantine princess were in progres 



i6.i EUROPE AT THE YEAR . [lo, 

C')nstantinople. With him the direct line of the Saxons dJ 
out, and it was for the princes of Germany to determine, 
Election of ^P^^ ^'^ successor in virtue of their electornl' 
He.rtryn. right. For the first time in German history \ 

have the story of a regular electoral struggl- 
between candidates of whom but one could claim a,]. 
superiority on the scoie of inheritance, and that only by a 
considerable stretch of the hereditary idea. The only rem- 
n:'nt of the Saxon house was Henry of Bavaria, son of Henry 
the Quarrelsome and great-grandson of Otto I. He natural = 
made what use he could of his descent from the grr.i. 
Saxon, but his actual claim to consideration was the hea 
ship of the Bavarian stem, just as his rivals, Hermann 
Swabia and Eckhart of Meissen, claimed recogniti^' 
as brave and successful leaders of important territorie 
*l*jckhart was murdered early in the contest and Henry 
gained the election by a process which was to becoii 
only too familiar, by promising the princes, especia' ■ 
those of the church, to make their support won 
wliile. 

Of definite electoral process there is as yet no trace wb; 
ever. The right of giving a vote seems not to have be 

defined in any way. Henry's first care was • 
'"pro es"*^ °^ secure the archbishop of Mainz and persua. 

him to perform the coronation ceremony. The 
gradually, by separate dealings with the princes of Saxon v 
Thuringia and Lorraine he secured a more formal coronati \i 
at Aachen and then Hermann the'Swabian, finding himseii 
alone, gave up the fight and acknowledged Henry's suprem- 
acv. That was an 'election.' Plainly there were certain 
persons whose support would be especially valuable for t^! 
candidate, but who these persons were, was a question to 
determined at each election by the peculiar circumstances 
:f the case. 



I002] POLICY OF HENRY II. 163 

The political problems awaiting Henry II were in many 
ways the same as those of his predecessors, and in so far 
Henr 's Po- ^^ shall have little to do with them. Oui inter- 
liticai Char- est is, especially, to follow the development of 
the great antagonism between the Empire and 
the Papacy, which is the most important issue in mediaeval ^ 
history. Henry II has gained a somewhat evil notoriety in 
history as the 'king of the priests.' This is due, undoubt- 
edly, to his great interest in clerical matters and to the great, 
sometimes excessive piety of his life. It would, however, 
be a very one-sided view of his activity, if we should leave 
out of sight the many other really great services which he 
rendered to the growing German monarchy. Henry was a 
; ious soul in a fanatically pious age, but he was man enough 
to turn the currents of this religious enthusiasm into very 
distinct political channels and thus to build up for his 
successors a set of institutions upon which thev were to rely 
for their best strength. 

It had become clear from the experience of his pre deces- 
ors that the great bishoprics were the real centres of 
German political power, so much so that the 
Bishoprics *^^ man who should succeed in keeping them firmly 
in hand would be able to control the policy of 
the nation, while any ruler who should not have their sup- 
port would seek in vain for a political make-weight against 
them. To control this body and at the same time to live 
on good terms with it, was the policy of Henry II , if we 
understand this, the true consistency of his reign and ihe 
value of it for the future will be clear to us. 

In the course of the conflict between church and state 
tor which the forces were now gathering, there were three 
points of especial interest and all of these are alrearv 
lieginning to appear during the reign of Henry II. fhc 
^ ere, first, the abolition of marriage through all the ■ c 



'oi- EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [1022 

of the parish clergy, the lower as well as the higher; second, 
Hu purity of election in the case of all clergymen, that is, 
that no bribery or other form of corruption should 
Issues ue- be used, but that each clerical officer should be 
tweea Church, put into his place "canonically," according to 
the established usage of the church. The 
thiici point was that the bishop should receive his right to 
per^iorm the duties of his office from no layman whomsoever, 
but from the pope alone. These demands, especially the 
third, the so-called right of papal investiture, form what 
inighi; well be called the platform of the papal party during 
t!ic whole long and bitter fight of the eleventh and twelfth 
ceiuuries. 

They interest us here as showing how the work of Henry 
I.I is connected with that of his successors. As regarded 
_ jj the right of appointing bishops in Germany and 

appoints Italy, there can be no doubt whatever, that 

Bishops. Henry II claimed it for himself in full and 

exercised it whenever he had a chance, without hesitation 
and without serious opposition. Again and again, as the 
great bishoprics became vacant, we find the king filling them 
with men on whom he expected to be able to rely, and 
though this expectation was often disappointed, still this 
does not affect the question of his right of appointment. In 
exercising this right he was following precedents which had 
ct'iTi^i down to him without interruption from the days of 
Charlemagne. 

Oil the other hand we must notice a result, which we 
shall have occasion to consider elsewhere, that by raising 
Th c J- up a strong German episcopate, the king was 

Seiigeustadt, preparing a weapon that might be turned against 
1022. himself at any moment when the interest of the 

t.piscopate should seem to conflict with that of the crowii. 
'■ ' stance of this was the action of archbishop Heribert of 



I022] GERMAN OPPOSITION TO THE PAPACY. 165 

Mainz, an appointee of the king, but a man little inclined 
to take a second place under the leadership of any one. 
His idea of the way to improve the German church was to 
make it a solid body with Mainz at its head and in pursu- 
ance of this idea, he called, soon after his election, a council 
of the suffragan bishops of Mainz at Seligenstadt in Fran- 
conia. Two canons of this council have made it famous: 
one providing that no person should go to Rome without 
the permission of his bishop ; another, that if any person, 
condemned by his regular clerical superior for a clerical 
offense, should get absolution for this offense from Rome, 
such absolution would be invalid. It has been supposed 
without sufficient reason that this was part of a plan to cut 
the German church loose from Rome entirely, but without 
going so far as this it is plain that these canons of Seligen- 
stadt contain a vigorous protest against the unlimited con- 
trol of Rome over Germany. 

Naturally such a declaration of independence was not 

well received at Rome, nor did it fall in with the emperor's 

ideas of church reform. He was already in inti- 

XIl6 D6cl3.— 

ration of mate relations with the pope Benedict VIII, a 
Hoechst, man of considerable energy, himself occupied 

1024. . . 

with plans of reform along lines very different 
from those of national church organization. Benedict's 
reply was a declaration^that Heribert had forfeited his right 
to the position of archbishop. Thereupon the Mainzer 
summoned, not merely his own suffragans, but the whole 
German episcopate to a synod at Hoechst, and we have a 
document in which this body declares itself responsible for 
whatever Heribert may have done to offend the pope. It, 
the German clergy as a whole, is guilty, if he be guilty, and 
therefore begs the pope, politely but firmly, to reconsider 
his action. This attitude of the German episcopate shows 
how far it had gone already in gaining a sense of its own 



166 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [1024 

unity and power. Both pope and king died within a very 

short time and thus we are unable to tell what the effect of 

Heribert's policy was in determining the later attitude of 

Germany towards the papacy. 

Defiance of Rome was not the only purpose of these 

German assemblies. They were occupied also with meas- 

_ TT J ures lookins: towards church reform in all matters 
Henry II and ^ 

Monastic of detail. The impulse here does not seem to 
e orm. have come from Cluny, but rather to have been 

independent. Henry's part in the process was to get hold 
of as much of the revenue of the church as possible and to 
turn this to the service of the crown. Especially in regard 
to the great monasteries, he made good his theory of royal 
supremacy. There was hardly one of the great German 
houses which did not sooner or later feel the weight of his 
hand. In one place he turned out all the monks and 
replaced them by those of a more devoted sort. In another 
he definitely abolished the organization and incorporated 
the foundation with a larger one in the neighborhood. In 
all cases his aim seems to have been to make these religious 
houses active centres of religious life, and where they seemed 
to have forgotten this purpose, to bring them back to it by 
force, not neglecting the profit of the crown by the way. 
But, if these reformatory efforts in Germany were independ- 
ent of Cluny, the two streams of clerical activity were soon 
to meet and to gain in power by combination. 

Tienrylland q^^ cause of this alliance is to be found in the 
Surgnndy. 

relations of Henry with Burgundy, the home and 

centre of the great reforming congregation. The origin of 
the kingdom of Burgundy we noticed in connection with 
ItaUan history at the point where Hugo of Provence, called 
to become king of Italy, resigned to Rudolf of upper Bur- 
gundy all his claims to sovereignty in Burgundy, on condition 
that Rudolf should give up all his claims in Italy. The 



ioo6] , HENRY II AND BURGUNDY. \G1 

Burgundian monarchy thus organized had never had any 
great vigor. The actual power was in the hands of a very 
active and independent nobility, which suffered the kings to 
keep their name, but were not inclined to let any real mon- 
archical traditions get a firm hold on the country. 

In the year 1006, the king Rudolf III, an uncle of Henry 

II, having no children of his own, proposed to make Henry 

his heir and to resign his kingdom at once into his hands. 

The measure was bitterly opposed by the Bur- 

First At"* 

tempts at gundian nobility, who doubtless feared that this 
Annexation would be regarded not merely as a personal 
succession of Henry himself, but as a definite 
incorporation of Burgundy into the body of the German 
kingdom. Rudolf yielded to the pressure of his nobles and 
withdrew his proposition, but then renewed it and let Henry 
make two fruitless expeditions into the country to enforce 
his authority. Nothing really came of these negotiations 
until the time of Conrad II, but they indicate that Burgundy 
was already turning rather towards Germany than towards 
France, a political combination destined to be of great im- 
portance to the history of Europe for another half century. 
The possession of the Burgundian passes into Italy was in 
itself a matter of the greatest moment in securing to Germany 
that close connection with Italy upon which the success of 
all future imperial schemes so largely depended. 

These dealings between Burgundy and the empire brought 
the influence of Cluny more directly to bear upon German 

affairs. We see it at work in Lorraine, and still 
Cluniac In- . , . ^ r - 1 ■ 1 

fluence in more we see it takmg a definite shape 111 the 

Germany and councils of the papacy. In referrino- to the 
at Rome. . . r ., ^.i / • t , • i 

origins 01 the Cluny reform m Italy m the time 

of Alberic, we noticed that the encouragement given to it at 

that time did not come from the papacy, but rather from 

the energetic and serious policy of the Roman tyrant him- 



168 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [loiS 

self. Now, however, the situation was changed. The 
papacy, after a long interval, had come once more into the 
hands of that same house of Tusculum to which Alberic 
had belonged. Again we meet the names, Theophylactus, 
Alberic and others, which we noticed in studying the events 
of a hundred years before. Again, out of this same circle 
there emerges a man, rising at once above the ordinary level 
of petty ambitions and ignoble vices which marked the 
Roman society, and setting himself vigorously to the task 
of putting something like order and decency into the papal 
administration. This man was the pope Benedict VIII. 
The means he employed were the same as those which 
Alberic had found successful : first, the control of the 
Roman factions, and second, the employment of the great 
ascetic movement as the only possible agent in enforcing 
moral ideas upon an incredibly loose and barbarous 
population. 

Furthermore, and here we see a departure from the policy 
of Alberic, the pope sought and found support in the 
empire. Henry II, called into Italy by a rival 
Empire in pope, declared that he would come to judge the 
Harmony. church " in accordance with the ancient consti- 
tutions," and, having looked over the situation, decided to 
support Benedict, in return for the imperial crown. Thus 
we see that Henry was willing to back up the pope in his 
resistance to the threatening power of the German episco- 
pate, while Benedict, on the other hand, seemed to have 
found in Henry the very man to help him in carrying out 
those measures of general church reform which the Cluny 
movement had outlined, and in which he, with a true fore- 
sight, saw the hope of a revived papacy. 

For the moment we find the great forces of European 
politics working in the same direction and controlled largely 
by the same hands. Empire, Papacy and Cluny united 



10 iS] HENRY II AND THE PAPACY. 169 

would have been irresistible. The only question was whether 

such a union could be maintained long enough to make it 

., ^ effective. Its one demonstration during; the 
Council at ^ 

Pavia, present crisis was at Pavia, in the year 1018. 

1018. Pope Benedict himself presided at a council of 

Lombard clergy at that place, and secured the passage of a 
series of decrees which give the tone for all similar declara- 
tions during the next hundred years. It was notorious that 
the clergy of Lombardy was, perhaps more than any other 
in Europe, living in open violation of that ascetic theory 
which the stricter party in the church had always main- 
tained. Members of all orders, from highest to lowest were 
living in open marriage, and the customs of the country had 
given to the children of such marriages even more recogni- 
tion than to those of ordinary laymen. They were allowed, 
as regarded legal rights, to follow the status of the mother, 
and were often fitted out in life with incomes drawn from 
the property of the church itself. 

The edicts of Pavia ordered all married clergymen to 
abandon their wives under penalty of suspension from office. 
The Pavian ^'^^ declared their children deprived of all their 
Decrees in special legal privileges. Such children, if the 
^ father were of servile origin, no matter what the 

status of the mother, were to become serfs of the church 
and to be forever incapable of holding property. Simony, 
the purchase of clerical positions by any illegal form of 
influence, received also the attention of the fathers at Pavia, 
and the pope reserved a final opinion on the whole question 
of reform for a general council to be summoned at no dis- 
tant day. That the emperor fully sympathized with these 
efforts is shown by the doings of a Saxon synod 

^L^ ^^^~ at Goslar within a few months after that at 
many. 

Pavia. Henry was present, and, in spite of 
considerable clerical opposition, pushed through a series 



170 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [1024 

of decrees enforcing those of Benedict. Free-born women 

who should marry a servile clerk were to be publicly whipped 

and banished. An imperial judge who should declare the 

sons of such a marriage to be free men should lose his 

office ; a notary who should help these unfortunates to the 

possession of land by drawing up the necessary documents 

should be fined and lose his hand. We are not for a 

moment to suppose that the mere issuing of edicts changed 

at once the habits of generations. The bitterness of the 

fight for a century to come would prove this. It is only 

important to notice that by the end of the reign of Henry II 

the issues of the great mediaeval conflict were pretty well 

defined. The marriage of the secular clergy was distinctly 

branded by imperial as well as by papal authority, and both 

these great powers showed a desire to work together in the 

general interest of a purification of society. 

On the other hand it must not be forgotten that this very 

combination of papacy, monarchy and the ascetic party in 

the church was rousinsf an opposition, the 
Opposition * ^^ ' 

in National strength of which no man in the tenth century 
c urc es. could suspect, but which, through the eleventh, 
and from that time on, was steadily gathering force. The 
national idea, not maintained by the kings or the princes of 
any European country, was taking form in the national 
churches, and from these was to work its way out into the 
political combinations of the future. We have already seen 
how this feeling had expressed itself in Germany at the 
synods of Seligenstadt and Hoechst. It found at the same 
time in France vigorous defenders against what seemed the 
too great activity of Cluny. This was the epoch of the 
Truce of God, but even so humane and promising a measure 
as that seemed, from the strictly national point of view, to 
be the function rather of the royal power than of an 
irresponsible body of sentimental monks. A very good 



I024] SUCCESS OF HEA^RY II. 171 

theoretical objection this ; but it should be evident to us 
now that, with a royal puppet at the mercy of the very 
classes it was his duty to control, the question was not one 
of theory but of fact, and that in fact this ascetic sentiment 
was the strongest moving force towards order and decency 
then active among men. 

That the great problems we have thus outlined were not 
more thoroughly dealt with in Henry's time was, perhaps, 
j^..., owing to the incessant pressure of military affairs 

Success of which drew him from one end of the empire to 
enry . ^j^^ Other, fighting in turn the northern Slavs, 
the duchy of Poland, which was gathering all the eastern 
Slavs into their first great political combination, the Greeks 
of the Adriatic coast, and the Normans, who had begun their 
career of Italian conquest and laid the foundation for the 
strongest state in the whole peninsula. It is a great deal to 
say in praise of the energy and skill of the emperor that on 
the whole he maintained the upper hand in all these direc- 
tions, and, at his death in 1024, left the empire in a more 
promising condition than ever. 

The imperial idea, which may fairly be said to have been 
on trial up to this time, was now definitely fixed in the politi- 
cal system of Europe. Germany was, without 
The Imperial • 1 1 i- 

Idea fixed question, the leadmg power of the contment, and 

in European althouph it would be too much to sav that the 
Politics. . - f , . , , ,. 

idea of the empire, as the actual director of all 

political affairs in Europe, had made any headway whatever, 

still, it cannot be denied that all nations were willing to 

grant it a distinct precedence of honor, and were glad to call 

upon it in any case of need. Especially as regarded Italy 

the policy of Henry may be counted as a success. During 

the whole of his reign he was called upon to fight against 

that tradition of a national Italian kingdom, which we have 

observed from the days of Charlemagne. It had taken form 



172 EUROPE AT THE YEAR 1000. [1024 

this time in the putting forward of a Lombard prince, 
Arduin of Ivrea, as king of Italy, and he had gathered to 
himself a considerable support from those who hoped to gain 
something by opposing the empire. It would, however, be 
an exaggeration to describe this as a real national move- 
ment. It had no life in it, and can interest us only as the 
last effort of the kind until the days of Victor Emmanuel. 



CHAPTER VI. 
THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

WiPO, Vita Chtionradi (II) regis ; Mon. Germ, xi and 2d. ed. 8vo. 1878. 
An excellent specimen of mediaeval biographical writing. 

Hermann of Reichenau, Chronicon to 1054; M. G. v. Hermann, 
called " the Lame " {conti-achis), is notable as well-informed on all public 
matters, though confined to his cloister by disease ; especially valuable 
for careful chronology; continued by Berthold to 1080, and by 

BeRNOLD to HOG. 

Annales Altahenses major es to 1073 ; ^- ^- ^^' ^^^ '^\o. Written at 
the monastery of Altaich in Bavaria, and dealing chiefly with South 
German affairs. 

Lambert of Hersfeld, An7iales to 1077 ; M. G. iii and 8vo. 1874. 
One of the best historical works of the Middle Ages, though seriously 
criticised by some scholars ; our chief source for German affairs from 
1050. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Bresslau, H. Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Konrad II. 

1879-84. 
Steindorff, E. Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich III. 

1874-81. 
Loeher, Fr. Kulturgeschichte der Deutschen im Mittelalter ; vols, i 

and ii. 1891-92. 
Juritzsch, G. Geschichte des Bischofs O^'o I von Bamberg (1102- 

1139). 1S89. 
Kluckhohn, a. Geschichte des Gottesfriedens. 1857. 
LIuberti, L. Studien zur Geschichte der Gottesfrieden und Land- 

frieden. Bk. i., Die Friedensordnungen in Frankreich, 1892. An 

undigested mass of notes from which a history may be written. 



174 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT [1024 

The death of the emperor Henry II, in the year 1024, ^ 

showed at once how insecure was the hold of the imperial 

idea outside of Germany itself. Boleslav, duke 
General r t^ i 1 i ^ c ^^^ 

Uprising o^ Poland, the creator 01 a great Slavonic state, 

Against the which had already threatened the very existence 
of the empire, hastened to take upon himself the 
name of "king." The Lombard nobles, not yet despairing 
of the success which Arduin had failed to v/in, applied to 
the king of France to become king of Italy as well, and 
when he declined the offer, persuaded the great duke 
William of Aquitaine to accept it for his son. The citizens 
of Pavia, the ancient Lombard capital and the natural centre 
of Lombard independence, rose in a furious protest against 
German supremacy and destroyed the imperial castle, which 
was to them its outward expression. Worst of all, on the 
western frontier, the two dukes of upper and lower Lorraine 
were in communication with the king of France about the 
possibility of a transfer of allegiance to him, and their 
neighbor, the powerful Eudes, duke of Champagne, was 
watching his opportunity to assert his hereditary claim to the 
kingdom of Burgundy, already promised, it is true, to the 
German emperor, but too valuable a prey thus easily to be let 
slip from the duke's hands. The great gains in dignity and 
influence which the empire had made under Henry II seemed 
to be in mortal peril.. That the imperial institution came 
out of this crisis stronger than ever, and entered upon a new 
career of the widest usefulness, is the proof that the strug- 
gles of the emperors, from Otto I down, against the spirit of 
factional independence in Germany, had not been in vain. 
Henry II died childless, and there was no member of his 

^ .^ house who could put forward a family connection 
Opportunity ^ •' 

for Free as a ground for the succession. There was, there- 

Election. £Qj.g^ g^^j^ ^^ opportunity for a real eleoition 
as had not happened since the choice of the first Conrad. 



I024] ELECTION OF CONRAD II. 175 

It will be remembered that in former so-called " elections " 
the process had been for a leading personage to assure him- 
self of the support of one or two of the chief stems, and 
then, relying upon this, to persuade or compel the rest to 
acknowledge his supremacy. The growth of the electoral 
idea is seen in the changed circumstances of the election of 
Conrad II. We have, fortunately, a very considerable 
record of the affair by the biographer of Conrad, and the 
details w^hich he gives us are in the main confirmed by other 
writers. 

The leaders of the whole nation seem to have grasped, as 

never before, the idea that every part had an interest in 

securing an efficient administration of the empire. 

Electoral ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ interest would best be secured by 

Conference. ^ 

a peaceful deliberation upon the qualifications of 

this and that candidate. At all events, they came, as never 
before, in great numbers to a meeting on the borders of the 
Rhine, between Mainz and Worms. All five stems were 
represented by their leading men, not yet, so far as we know, 
by any well-defined process of representation, but only in 
pursuance of the ancient Germanic principle that every man 
who carried a sword had a right to speak on matters of the 
public weal. It is most interesting to see that the grounds 
of selection chiefly emphasized were the personal qualities 
of the men, and the prospect that they would be able to 
meet the demands of the time. Not, for instance, the 
superiority of one stem over others, or of one family over the 
whole nation, was insisted upon, but only the promotion of 
the common good. The spirit of the occasion is well ex- 
Election of pressed by the story of the action of the two 
Conrad H. leading candidates themselves. These were two 
Conrads of the Prankish house, cousins, and 
descendants, both, of the first Otto. The opinion of the 
"delegates," as we should call them, seemed about equally 



176 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1024 

divided, when the elder Conrad, going personally to his young 
cousin, represented to him how much depended upon the 
unity of the empire, and persuaded him to join with himself 
in promising that whatever should be the issue of the formal 
choice, both would unite in enforcing it, or in modern 
American language, " making it unanimous." The choice 
fell upon the elder Conrad, a man reminding us far more of 
the- early type of Charlemagne or Otto I, than of the later, 
more refined, but less practical rulers of the Saxon line. He 
was a rough soldier, unlearned, but with the clear eye to the 
main chance that was destined to save him, and the state as 
well, at many a critical moment. 

Let us notice how the problems of the empire were shap- 
ing themselves. The Polish king, Boleslav, died soon after 

- . . Conrad's accession, but his son Mieczislav 
Conrad and ' 

the Polish plainly determined to maintain in every respect 
Monarchy. ^j^^ attitude of his father, declared himself king 
of Poland, and at once prepared to assert by force his inde- 
pendence of German supremacy. With this object in view 
he sought the alliance of the powerful Knut, king of Den- 
mark and England, an alliance which would have brought an 
almost fatal pressure to bear upon the northern and eastern 
frontiers of the empire. Conrad met this move by a prompt 
negotiation with Knut, in which, in return for the Mark 
Schleswig, between Schlei and Eider, he gained a permanent 
ally of kindred blood, of the same religious faith, and am- 
bitious to take his place as one in the family of great Chris- 
tian rulers. The later success of Conrad against the Poles 
was largely due to this bit of clever statesmanship. 

On the other side, towards the west, the danger was still 
greater and more imminent. The critical point 

Conrad and j^^^^ ^^^ ^^ usual, the great district of Lorraine, 

Lorraine. 1 1 •o ' 

extending now over the valleys of the Rhine, 

Maas and Moselle, and held at the moment by two dukes, 



I025] CONRAD'S POLITICAL ACTIVITY. Yl^l 

Frederic and Gozelo. These two had been the only mal- 
contents at the election of Conrad ; they had withdrawn 
from the meeting, and as soon as the election was declared, 
they became the centre of a conspiracy, similar in most re- 
spects to those we have so often met in the times of Otto I 
and his successors. The difference here was that not 
merely personal questions of allegiance were involved, but 
the whole control of Germany over its western lands was at 
stake. If the Lorrainers could get better terms from the 
French than from the German kingdom, there was nothing 
in the traditions of the land or in the principles of the 
feudal state to prevent such a transfer. In fact, this was 
attempted. King Robert of France gladly accepted the 
suggestion that he should occupy Lorraine ; Eudes of 
Champagne promised his assistance if Robert would support 
him in his scheme upon Burgundy ; young Conrad, breaking 
his campaign promises, joined the league, and the new 

_ . king's step-son, the famous knisfht and popular 

Lorraine ^ ir •> & i r 

saved to the hero, Ernst of Swabia, was ready with his follow- 
mpire. ^^^ ^^ take a hand in any desperate game which 

promised spoil to the victors. Again Conrad II met this 
most threatening combination by a master-stroke of policy. 
While the conspirators were arming, each in his own lands, 
Conrad went straight at the heart of the matter, 

1025. . 

marched into lower Lorraine and promised its 
duke, Gozelo, that if he would stand by Germany, he should, 
upon the death of Frederic, becom,e ruler of upper Lorraine 
as well. The desertion of Gozelo left the conspirators with- 
out a rallying-point, and, one after the other, they sent in 
their allegiance to Conrad. Lorraine was saved to the em- 
pire, and eight years later the promised union of 
the two parts actually took place. 
Thus defended in the east and west, Conrad began his 
preparations for the journey to Rome, not, as had so often 



178 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT [1027 

been the case, invited by one or another of the Itahan 
powers, but in pursuance of his function as German king, to 

whom, if he chose to claim it, belonged also now 
ciSms the ^^ virtue of a long tradition, the imperial crown. 
Imperial The Italian situation seemed desperate enough. 
Rig^ ^' ^ ^^^^^ William of Aquitaine, who had accepted 

the crown of Italy for his son, had just made 
a journey of inspection into the country and had with- 
drawn this acceptance, but the temper of the Lombard 
nobility was distinctly hostile to the imperial party. Once 
more Conrad was keen enough to see where the clue to his 
Italian policy must lie. The Lombard clergy, Aribo of 
Milan at their head, were already beginning to show that 
spirit of independence of the papal control which was to 
make them the surest reliance of the empire in the approach- 
ing struggle. Conrad, by securing the firm adherence of 
this party, was able to gain a foothold in the land, and then 
might safely trust to his sword to make good his claims.' 

The thoroughness of Conrad's work is seen in the fact 
that he spent a full year in northern Italy in overcoming the 
Lombard resistance, before starting on his march to Rome. 

The pope of the hour was John XIX, one of the 
Pope Jo i^^g^ illustrations of the utter worldliness into 

which the papal conception was constantly in 
danger of falling. We have already seen with what energy 
and purity of purpose pope Benedict VIII of the Tusculan 
family had taken up the work of Cluny, the very essence of 
which was to keep the clergy in all its ranks as far as pos- 
sible from the ordinary corruptions of civil life. At his 
death, the Tusculan party, not of itself concerned with any 
principles, except that of keeping hold of the great prize it 
had in hand, put forward the brother of Benedict, a layman, 
whose only preparation for the papal office was the expe- 
rience he had had as the business man of his brother's 



I027] CONRAD'S ROMAN POLICY. 179 

administration. In one day this layman was hurried 

through all the clerical orders, and, without notable protest, 

became as much a pope as any had been. 

In his foreign policy John XIX saw at once the great 

advantage of the German alliance. He formally invited 

Conrad to Rome and crowned him at Easter, 

Coronation of JQ27, with everv circumstance of honor and 
Conrad II. ' ' •> 

brilliancy. The splendor of the occasion was 

enhanced by the presence of two other kings, Rudolf of 
Burgundy and Knut of Denmark and England, together 
with an extraordinary delegation of the highest nobility and 
clergy of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. The usual street 
row between Romans and Germans was not wanting ; it 
was the perpetually recurring expression of a deep-seated 
hatred in the Roman populace of foreign intervention, 
which they were, nevertheless, constantly inviting, and 
without which they were incapable of existing. A great 
Lateran Synod, following the coronation, seems not to have 
attacked the evils of the church with any very considerable 
energy. 

By far the most important incident of the reign of Con- 
rad II was the definite incorporation of the kingdom of 
Burgundy into the empire. We have already 

Annexation j-^Q^^iQe,^ ^hg f^^-g^ stasres of this process in the 

of Bnrgundy : * ^ 

its Advan- time of Henry II. It had been from the first 

tage to the ^ purely dynastic affair, not resting upon any 

party within the Burgundian kingdom itself, but 

plainly one of those political " deals " between kings, which 

the very nature of the feudal system tended to make easy. 

The advantage for the empire was evident ; the possession 

of the Burgundian passes into Italy would give it a security 

it could never enjoy so long as it was restricted to the use 

of those leading over the eastern Alps. Burgundy would 

serve the empire as a buffer against France in the south, as 



ISO THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [. 

Lorraine did in the north. The resources of this extraordi- 
narily fertile and thickly populated country might prove a 
great addition to the meagre revenues of the imperial crown. 
On the other hand, the resistance of the Burgundian 
nobility is explained by a very natural dread. They feared 
lest the coming of a strong hand should bring in 

Resistance in ^ ^^^^^x of law in place of the feudal looseness 
Burgundy. ^ ^ 

by which they thrived. They preferred the 

nominal sovereignty of a weak native ruler whom they could 
control, to the doubtful glory of sharing in the administra- 
tion of a foreign government backed by the resources of 
Germany. In spite, therefore, of the good will of king 
Rudolf, the empire had made no headway in Burgundy 
down to the time of his death. His natural heir was the 
energetic Eudes of Champagne, perhaps the most powerful 
vassal of the French crown, whose success in Burgundy 
would have meant not merely his personal advantage, but, 
probably, the definite turning of the land toward France 
rather than toward Germany. 

As soon as Rudolf was gone, Eudes marched his followers 
into Burgundy to take possession of the country, and, in 
the Romanic portions, found a tolerable degree of support, 
while the Germanic districts, now the western parts of 
Switzerland, showed more inclination towards the empire. 
Once more Conrad was equal to the occasion. King 
Robert of France had died a few months before, and his 

^ son, Henry I, dependent, as was every feudal 
Overcome by ' j t r ? j 

Conrad-'s monarch, upon the good will of his great vassals, 
Energy. could not afford to neglect any opportunity to 

strengthen himself by a useful alliance. Conrad offered 
him the friendship of the empire, and proposed a marriage 
between his little daughter and the son of the French king. 
By this stroke he secured himself for the moment against a 
combination of Eudes with the French crown, and, instead 



1032] BURGUNDY ANNEXED TO THE EMPIRE. 181 

of putting his strength into a Burgundian campaign, turned 

the weight of his forces against Champagne. Eudes, whose 

troops were occupied in Burgundy, seeing his inheritance 

on the verge of ruin, hastened to make terms, and, in return 

for assurances of safety at home, gave up forever his claims 

upon the Burgundian succession. 

Thus, by a brilliant combination of diplomacy and military 

skill, was completed a policy, which for a quarter of a century 

had been one of the chief objects of imperial 
Burgundy ^ ^ 

incorporated, ambition. Henceforth, for about two hundred 
^^^^* years the fortunes of Burgundy, both in its 

northern and its southern portions, are bound up with those 
of Germany. A separate chancellorship for Burgundian 
affairs was established and was usually in the hands of the 
archbishop of Treves, as that for Italy was usually in those 
of the archbishop of Cologne. It must be remembered that 
all this time there was another Burgundy, the duchy, lying 
to the northwest of the kingdom, and already permanently 
connected with the crown of France as one of its great 
feudatory possessions. It is further worth noticing that by 
this conquest of Burgundy the empire was brought into still 
closer relations with the great ascetic movement of Cluny, 
and was able to aid in its extension. 

So long as Conrad lived, this aid was rather negative 
than positive. His interest in religious matters seems to 
c ad d have been a purely political one, not even, as had 
Religious been the case with Henry II, mingled with 
Ques ions. profound personal piety. Conrad plainly felt 
himself head of the state in church relations, and the 
appointment of bishops goes on under him without question. 
Upon the death of the restless Heribert of Mainz, he carried 
through, in the face of all opposition, the appointment of a 
quiet and unambitious monk, who promised to give him no 
trouble with inordinate claims for his see. It is at this time 



/ 



182 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1036 

that the chancellorship for Italy passes out of the hands 
of Mainz into those of Cologne where it was to remain 
permanently. 

The fact is that the greater part of Conrad's reign was 
occupied with schemes for making the kingdom hereditary 

in his house as a make-w^ei^ht ag-ainst the prin- 
Conflict of . . . . 1 . r ^ r 1 1 • T 1 

Elective with ciple 01 mlieritance of nef s, by which the mem- 
Hereditary bers of the state were becoming far more fixed in 
Principle. t • , • • , i 

then" political positions than was the sovereign 

whom they nominally served. The experience of the world 
since then is the proof how idle these efforts were ; and one 
might have thought that a glance westward would have been 
enough to convince the warmest advocates of an hereditary 
monarchy. Precisely as the idea of inheritance gained 
ground in Fr^ance, the power of the great vassals grew also. 
Nothing could be more welcome to them than a weak king, 
and the chances of getting such a weakling were far better 
if they trusted to inheritance, than if they allowed the 
election to fall, as it might well do, upon the fittest man. 
Probably the greatest blessing for Germany was that Con- 
rad's plan did not quite succeed, though it did bring the house 
of Franconia for four generations upon the throne. The 
miseries of a long minority in the third of these generations 
were a sufficient lesson. 

We have already seen how, in the time of Otto I, the 

attempt was made to bring the great stem-duchies into the 

family of the king, and how this effort was 

Theory of defeated by the loyalty of the stems to their 

Balance of ancient local traditions. The same attempt was 
Classes 

now made by Conrad II. He promised the 

great vassals of the crown that their fiefs should be heredi- 
tary on condition that they would guarantee the same 
privilege to their own vassals. Two important ends were 
doubtless held in view in this measure : it tended to secure 



1036] CONRAD'S THEORY OF THE EMPIRE. 183 

to the king the loyalty of the great mass of fighting men and 

also to do away with one of the chief causes of the incessant 

private warfare, which was the curse of the period. It 

seemed to offer to the lower man the reasonable prospect of 

a strict administration of the royal justice towards the great 

vassals who were likely to oppress him. But, plainly as a 

return for this favor, Conrad demanded that the royal power 

too should be recognized as heritable, not, to be sure, by 

any formal document, an action which would 
in Germany . ^ ,■, -, r • i i 1 

surely have called for resistance, but by the more 

powerful argument of fact. Whenever the chance came, he 

took into his own hands the administration of a great duchy 

and passed it on to his son. Thus, in the course of his 

reign he succeeded in gaining Bavaria and Swabia for the 

boy Henry, and Carinthia for his early rival and later firm 

friend, the younger Conrad, who had no children and whose 

heir he was. Saxony and Lorraine alone remained in the 

hands of local powers. The stem-duchy evidently did not 

enter Conrad's ideas of inheritance in any line but his own. 

Once more a policy, apparently in the interest of uniformity 

and peace, ended in raising up infinite causes of future 

difficulty. 

The same rivalry of classes, lower with higher, was even 

more pronounced in northern Italy than in Germany, and 

was here also the occasion for notable events. 
and in Italy. 

The archbishop Aribo of Milan, who had wel- 
comed Conrad on his first Italian journey and crowned him 
as king of Italy, had become so bold in the assertion of the 
rights of his see over all Lombardy that he called forth the 
most violent complaints from the class of the lower nobility, 
known here as yaljias^jrres . In making good his claims 
against them he made use of the upper class of nobles, the 
great vassals of the bishopric as well as of other lords, who 
were called the capitanei. While Conrad was engaged in 



184 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT [1037 

the policy of strengthening himself with the lower vassals of 
Germany, the same class in northern Italy had reached the 
limit of endurance, had risen everywhere against their lords 
and had forced them to considerable concessions. A com- 
mon interest drew them to the emperor. He, nothing loth to 
have so good a cause, came promptly over the Alps, just ten 
years after his first expedition, summoned Aribo to his 
tribunal, declared him deposed from his bishop- 
ric, and lent his arms to the valvassores in the 
fight against their oppressors. We have a document known 
as the feudal constitution of Conrad II. The clauses of 

this famous document show how completely 
Conrad's . ,. , , • i r 1 

Feudal Con- Conrad was uichned to put the weight or the 

stitntionfor empire on the side of the lower fighting class 

as against all comers. He confirms to them the 

full inheritance of their feudal holdings and their complete 

independence as regarded their lands in fee. He assures 

them that their causes shall be decided only in a court of 

their peers, the " schoeffen " court of the Germans. They 

shall have the right of appeal to the emperor, and their fiefs 

shall not be converted into tenures on a money basis. 

The value of these arrangements was seen at once in the 

defeat of a notable conspiracy. Aribo of Milan, defeated 

by the emperor's diplomacy, sought to revive 

A Lombard gnce more the spirit of Lombard independence 
Conspiracy. ^ _ ^ 

and to make his cause a national one. He 

headed a conspiracy to offer the crown of Italy to Eudes of 

Champagne, to whom this offer seemed to open a brilliant 

opportunity. Eudes was to overrun Lorraine, the Italians 

were to get possession of the emperor, and Burgundy, as 

well as Italy, was to be the prize. Eudes did, in fact, begin 

his part of the compact, but was defeated and killed in 

battle through the loyalty of duke Gozelo. Conrad's policy 

was vindicating itself at every turn. 



1039] CONRAD'S ITALIAN LEGISLATION 185 

At Rome, the coming of Conrad was the signal for the 

outbreak of popular movements quite similar to those in the 

North. Here, also, we have a document, in 
Conrad's ' ' 

Roman which the noteworthy incident is the confirma- 

Legislation. ^-^^ ^^ ^1^^ Romans of their right to be tried in 
all cases by the Roman law. We have here, doubtless, an 
effort to free the Roman inhabitants of the Roman state 
from the weight of legal burdens which had been imposed 
upon them by their Lombard rulers of a few generations 
previous. How far Conrad H was from taking any large 
view of his mission as director, not to say reformer, of 
the universal church, may be gathered from his dealings 
with the papacy at this time. Never before had the 
papal institution been in a more scandalous condition. 
John XIX had been bad enough, but at his death the 
Tusculan party, which had put him in office, outdid itself 
by putting forward another member of its house, a boy 
of ten years, already, if we may believe the rec- 
di^K ^^' ^^^'> ^ -^^^^^ monster of iniquity, and getting him 
accepted as pope. There is no evidence that 
this arrangement seemed to Conrad worthy of notice in any 
way. He confirmed the appointment, and, so far as we can 
see, his legislative work in Rome was with the special 
object of strengthening the papal administration. 

The very sudden death of Conrad H in the second year 
after his return from Italy, prevented any further develop- 
ment of the idea of a strongly centralized empire 

ucationo ^^ -^ seems to have existed in his mind, but 
Henry III. ' 

there was no organized opposition to his theory 

of the succession, and all parties united in supporting his 

son Henry, already crowned as king of Germany. Indeed, 

if we may believe the annals of Hildesheim, there was no 

one in the empire to mourn the loss of Conrad, so general 

was the expectation of good things from the son. In direct 



186 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1039 

contrast with his father, who belongs in the series of hard 
fighters who had made the new empire, Henry had grown up 
to man's estate under the influence of the best education the 
age afforded. His training had been distinctly a learned one. 
His mother, Gisela of Swabia, a niece of king Rudolf of 
Burgundy, had brought him under the care of men who rep- 
resented the riper culture of these southwestern lands, a 
culture which naturally partook largely of the clerical char- 
acter. We are still well within the times when no man 
could be learned in books without the aid of the clergy, nor 
could a prince brought up under these influences fail to be 
impressed very early with the immense importance of the 
church establishment. 

It will not, therefore, surprise us that the chief interest of 
the reign of Henry III lies in his relations with the clerical 

powers, as that of his father lay in its single de- 
Clerical . .. . , T T- . 1 TT 

Character of votion to political advanrage. It is under Henry 
Henry's that we may begin to distinguish with perfect 

clearness the outlines of the great mediaeval 
conflict. We are once more carried back a hundred years, 
to the days of Otto I, but only to be reminded how im- 
mensely the situation of the empire had gained in prestige 
and in practical opportunity. 

Never had so wide a field of influence opened out before 

a German king. The fruits of the clever policy of Conrad 

II were being gathered on every side. In the 

Henry's east, the great Polish monarchy had suffered 

Opportunity. > & ./ 

the fate of every Slavonic state, and was rapidly 
falling to pieces for lack of a principle of unity within 
itself. Against it M^as rising into power the new Chris- 
tian-Slavonic state of Bohemia, which was naturally drawn 
towards Germany for support. In Hungary there were 
two parties, a heathen and a Christian, struggling for the 
mastery ; and here, too, the Christian interest sought its 



1 039] BEGINNINGS OF HENRY III. 187 

ally most naturally in the nearest and greatest of" the 
western powers. 

In the North, the overgrown power of Denmark was 
checked by the death of Knut and the failure of his succes- 
sors to hold together the great empire he had 
founded. The combination of England with the 
North was thus averted, and within a generation the Nor- 
man conquest had definitely determined that the political 
future of England was to be connected with France rather 
than with any other European power. In the West the 
royal power of France was hopelessly struggling against the 
great development of the feudal nobility, irica- 
pable of any vigorous policy. The same Norman 
conquest, carried out by a subject of the French crown, 
was to be the severest blow yet struck at the integrity of 
the Capetian kingdom. 

In the South, there was no power in sight that could 
for a moment oppose the progress of the imperial arms. 
Through the vigor of Conrad's treatment, the 
great masses of fighting men in Lombardy and 
farther southward were for the moment secured to the 
imperial as against any conceivable local allegiance. The 
papacy was wholly out of the question, lost for the time 
as a factor in European life by its subjection to a local 
faction. 

Equally flattering with this outward situation were the 
prospects for strength and progress within. The new king 

*,4. J.,. * was himself duke in Franconia, Swabia and 
Strength of ' 

the Empire Bavaria. Carinthia, where duke Conrad had 
^^ ^^* lately died, was left without a head during a 

considerable period, and so general was the acquiescence 
of all parties in this order of things that not even the 
change of rulers could call forth resistance. In Lorraine 
and Saxony alone were there still active centres of local 



188 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT [1040 

allegiance. Not even the reign of the great Otto himself 
had begun under more favorable auspices. 

The first problem of the young emperor was, naturally, 
to secure himself along the eastern frontier. The course 

of things here during the preceding two genera- 
f/^ohemia^ tions had been that instead of the scattered 

tribes which had continually worried the border 
from Charlemagne's time, there had been growing up great 
confederations of Slavs, of which the Polish had come to 
overshadow all the rest. Christianity had done something 
here, but nothing lasting. The bishopric of Posen, estab- 
lished in 968, had marked only an outward triumph of the 
cross, and in the general break-up which followed the death 
of the first great Polish king, Boleslav, the heathen influ- 
ence had again risen into the ascendant. This was the 
opportunity for Bohemia, and the duke of the moment, 
Bretislaw, was the man to grasp it. His policy was to 
follow the same principle which had given so great an 
impulse to the Polish and to the Hungarian peoples, 
namely, to make Christianity the rallying-cry of a new 
nation. Outwardly, his aim was to elevate Prague to be, not 
only the capital of his kingdom, but also an independent 
centre of church authority. 

The erection of a new archbishopric for Bohemia was, 
however, a direct attack upon the prerogatives of Mainz, 

and could not be suffered to take place without 
Prague as , ^^ , . , , . 

Capital ^ struggle. Nothmg could so greatly recom- 

andArch- mend this ambition of Bretislaw as the posses- 
bishopric. . ^ ^ . . . , , 

sion of a nrst-rate samt, and no samt had a 

higher claim to the reverence of the Bohemian people 

than the martyr Adalbert, the friend of Otto HI, whose 

bones, treasured at Posen, were the most precious possession 

of Christian Poland. In Bretislaw's first campaign into 

Poland, in 1040, this capture was the prime object, and 



1040-1041] BOHEMIA SUBJECT TO THE EMPIRE. 189 

was successful beyond expectation. Under the impulse of 
so great an advantage, he put himself at once in communi- 
cation with Rome, and demanded the elevation of his 
capital to the rank of Metropolis of ail the Slavonic lands. 
Probably he negotiated at the same time for his own recog- 
nition as king of Bohemia in a vassalage, more or less well 
defined, to the Roman see. 

So far as Rome was concerned, the establishment of an 
independent Bohemian state, with an ecclesiastical head of 
its own, in direct dependence upon the papacy, 
from Ger- might well seem a considerable advantage, espe- 
many. cially as the spoils of conquered Poland were 

on hand to pay for the privilege ; but to the young and 
ambitious king of Germany, as well as to the chief ecclesi- 
astics of his kingdom, the attempt could only appear as an 
infringement upon old and well-established rights. He 
determined at once upon war. 

The vigor of the new Bohemian movement is seen in the 

powerful resistance offered to the first assault of Henry. 

„ ^. ^ Two German armies, sent at the same time by 

Obstinate ' ^ 

Resistance of different roads into the country, were totally 
emia. defeated and driven back with immense loss. 
The national character of the uprising is seen in the new 
legislation by which Bretislaw marked his accession to 
power. Plainly, the sense of unity in Bohemia had never 
been appealed to as now. The only question to be deter- 
mined was, whether this unity could best be secured by 
resistance to Germany or by an honorable alliance with it. 

This question was settled for a long time to come by the 
events of the next year. Henry repeated his attack on the 
same lines, but with a stronger force, and this time carried 
all before him. Bretislaw, defeated at every point, hastened 
to send in his submission, even offering his land as the 
property of the German king. According to good feudal 



190 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1041 

custom, the land was returned to him on condition of 
homage and the payment of a yearly tribute. The estab- 
lishment of an archbishopric in Prague was indefinitely post- 
poned, — indeed, the bishop of that place had been the 
first to perceive the hopeless character of the war against 
Germany, and had deserted his master to make terms with 
the invaders. The acquisition of Bohemia as an integral 
part of the empire was an event second in importance only 
„ . . to that of Burgundy. Though its inhabitants 
Bohemia to were of an alien stock, there was from this time 
e Empire, f^j-^-j^ always a large party among them which 
perceived in the German connection the hope of national 
progress. The advantage to Germany was, that as long as 
this connection could be maintained, it could always depend 
upon having a solid backing against other Slavonic com- 
binations. With many ups and downs, Bohemia remains 
from this time in the relation into which it now enters, and, 
within a few generations, takes its place as one of those 
seven powers, supreme above the rest, by whom the election 
of the German king is to be decided. 

The downfall of Poland carried with it the best support 
of the new Christian state in Hungary. The first Christian 
_ . king, Stephen, had died in the year 1038 and 

Reaction in had been succeeded by his nephew Peter, son 
ung-ary. ^^ ^^ Italian father, and not too acceptable a 
ruler, even to the Christian elements of the population. 
His accession was the signal for the revival of the ancient 
Hungarian heathenism, under the inspiration of which the 
great achievements of the race, only two generations before, 
had been carried out. A leader, Aba or Ovo by name, was 
put forward and the old raiding instinct of the Hungarians 
was appealed to once more. 

In the year 1042 a triple stream of fighting men poured 
westward along the familiar paths on both sides of the 



1 04 >^ 



HUMGAKV :>rBjECT /'' .J:/^ EMPIRE. 191 



l>anube, anel southward into the duchy of Carinthia. One 
of these troops gained a considerable advantage, but the 
fate of the other two showed how well the establishment of 

the mark system had justified itself. The as- 
RaiS^into sault on the left bank of the Danube was met 
Bavaria and by the markgraf Luitpold of Babenberg, that into 

Carinthia by markgraf Gottfried, and in both 
cases the invading swarm was driven back with great loss. 
Meanwhile the young king, supported faithfully by Bretislaw 
of Bohemia, had gathered an imperial army, and, marching 
with great promptness along the left bank of the Danube, 
had carried the war into Hungary. His victory seemed 
complete, and he returned to Germany, leaving a consider- 
able force to maintain order. Within a few months Aba 
was again in possession of the country and sought the 
friendship of Henry, promising to give up the whole western 
part of Hungary to Germany and to do homage as the man 
of the German king. 

These promises were almost immediately broken, and 
Henry, to whom the interest of religion appealed quite as 

much as that of policy, called upon his army to 
Vassal State reinstate the banished Christian king Peter by 
ermany. j_q^^q Qf arms. This time it came to a pitched 
battle at Menfoe, near the river Raab, in which the German 
arms were completely victorious. Peter, restored to his 
throne and supported by the Christian party, appeared 

the year following before the king, and, in the 

presence of the full court, delivered the king- 
dom into his hands and received it back again as his 
vassal. 

Already a similar revival had been going on in Poland. 
A representative of the fallen house had attached himself 
to the German interest and had been allowed to risk life 
and fortune in a desperate attempt 10 restore Christianity 



192 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1054 

and an orderly administration to ^he country. The attempt 

succeeded beyond expectation, and, althousrh 
Christianity , , ^ . \ ^ , .^ 

and German tlie monarchy was not revived, Poland, with 

Allegiance in diminished territory, but more actual unitv, 
Poland. , . ^ r ^1 . . , ^ 

became again a centre of Christian and Ger- 
manic influence among the Slavs. Here, too, Henry III 
gained a vassal state. 

Thus, within the first six years of his reign, the young 
king had succeeded in making the kingdom strong along 

_ „T , the whole line of the eastern frontier as it had 
Henry III and 

the French not been for many years, and could now turn his 
"^ ^^' attention with more security to the western and 

southern parts of his empire. The question of Lorraine 
was, as it has always been, one of extreme difficulty, but 
involved only personal and dynastic considerations, so that 
we need refer to it only to suggest a connection which was 
destined to be of European importance. Godfrey, the son 

of that Gozelo of lower Lorraine to whom king 
Tuscany and (^^Q^rad H had given also upper Lorraine, proved 

himself a thorn in the side of Henry during the 
greater part of his reign, — a restless, ambitious and capable 
man. Defeated in his ambitions in Lorraine, he turned his 
plots in another direction, and married, in 1054, Beatrice, 
widow of markgraf Boniface of Tuscany, herself a Lorrainer 
by birth. This Beatrice, already famous as a supporter of 
the Roman church, was the mother of a still more famous 
daughter, Matilda, " the great countess," who is one of the 
central figures in the Hildebrandine drama of the next 
generation. Matilda married the son of Godfrey, of the 
same name, and thus the fortunes of two great territories, 
widely separated, but each of decisive importance for the 
imperial policy, were bound together by a double tie. 

As to the Burgundian acquisition, that gave no further 
trouble. The nobility of the land sent an embassy to the 



I043] FRENCH MARRIAGE OF HENRY III. 193 

young king at Ingelheim and assured him of their allegi- 
ance. It was, doubtless, this Burgundian connection that 
led Henry, upon the death of his first wife, to 
Marriage seek a new alliance in southern France. This 
of Henry . ^^^^ moreover, in pursuance of the same 
policy which had caused Conrad II to propose a marriage 
between his daughter and a son of the French king, only 
that the connection here was with a vassal house far 
stronger and more influential than that of the Capetians. 
Agnes of Poitiers was the daughter of that duke William of 
Aquitaine, who had declined to take the crown of Italy for 
his son in opposition to the imperial policy. She represented 
not only the riper culture of southern France, but also that 
religious movement of which the neighboring Cluny, a 
foundation of her family, was the centre. Severe critics saw 
in this marriage a dangerous lowering of the moral standards 
which had kept the simple folk of Germany free from the 
perilous charms of the art and color-loving peoples of the 
south, but Henry, as if to set such doubts at rest, turned all 
the troop of jugglers, jesters, and other artists, who had 
followed the royal wedding, away from his doors unrewarded 
and neglected. 

Yet this southern connection marks the beginning of the 
king's interest in a moral movement, to which we have 

already alluded, the " Truce of God." Thus far 
Henry III ^ • n r i • 

and the the influence of this extraordinary effort had 

Public been confined to France and Burgundy. It had 

It 63.C6* , 

met with great resistance, but had on the whole 
made a very remarkable progress, and had commended itself 
to the more order-loving portions of the population. It is 
usually spoken of as a religious movement, and, doubtless, 
it rested its appeal mainly upon religious grounds, but we 
have also to consider that it was supported by the same set 
of ideas which were leading, in precisely these lands, to a 



194 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1044 

pretty general abandonment of the early tribal traditions of 
the Germanic peoples, and substituting for them the more 
formal written codes of the Roman Law. In the very year 
of his marriage, we find Henry, at an assembly of the princes 
and clergy of Swabia at Constance, after first declaring his 
own forgiveness of all his enemies, calling upon the princes 
of the land to follow his example, and to promise for the 
future to abstain from private quarrels and to seek for justice 
in the public courts. It seems that he actually succeeded 
in getting this promise from most of the Swabian nobility, 
and in the year following made a similar attempt in Lorraine, 
but here, as in France, we are by no means to suppose that 
the object sought was in any great degree attained. It was, 
so far as Germany was concerned, only the earliest of the 
numerous proclamations of the " Landfrieden," the Peace 
of the country, by which the kings sought to express their 
right to enforce order and justice, and their determination 
to do so. Whether such proclamations were anything but 
expressions of good intention depended upon the support of 
the very kind of persons whose liberties were to be restrained, 
For the moment there was no motive so powerful as a re- 
ligious one ; and such sudden leaps from extremes of violence 
to extremes of penitence and self-degrading promises for 
the future, belong to the character of the age we are trying 
to describe. 

Under the impulse of these same motives, we find Henry 

joining hands with the congregation of Cluny in the great 

work of church reform. In the year 1044 he 

and the held a general assembly of the German clergy 

Reforms of 2.w^ gave utterance to sentiments so remarkable 
Cluny. , . . 

that we cannot help doubtmg the entire accuracy 

of the report. According to this account Henry charged 

the whole clergy of his country with having bought their 

offices, and, worse yet, heaped reproaches upon his own 



1044] HENRY III AND CLUNY. 195 

father for having besmirched his hands with the sale of 
clerical positions. This offense was the most direct form of 
that evil to which we have already referred in speaking of 
the programme of Cluny, under the name of " simony." 
The origin of this name is connected with the story in the 
Acts of the Apostles of the magician Simon, who came and 
asked that he might receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, 
offering to pay for it with money. The answ^er of the 
Apostle Peter had expressed the opinion of the church from 
that day forth. " Thy money perish with thee because thou 

has thought that the gift of God may be purchased 
"S?mon°^"^ with money." As the idea of the priesthood 

had developed, this "gift of God" had come to 
mean the priestly function, and the offense of which the 
innocent magician had, in the apostle's eyes, been guilty, 
had taken the form of all attempts to get into the offices of 
the church by means of payment in any kind. At first, as 
the office of priest had been but little distinguished from 
that of the layman, the motive for any such effort had been 
slight. The function of the priest was rather a burden, per- 
haps, than a distinction. But, as the priesthood had come 
to be separated from the laity, especially as the offices of the 
church had become endowed with large and fixed incomes, 

the desire to get possession of them had grown 
S'mo^^^ ° ^^^ ^^^ become dangerous to the welfare of the 

community. Social consideration too had been 
added to the other perilous attractions of the priesthood, 
and it had become the interest of great families to hold the 
chief ecclesiastical places in their own hands. The feudal 
principle had then come in to further still more the worldly 
aspect of clerical life. The great bishoprics and abbacies 
had long since become centres of immense landed estates, 
worked by hundreds and thousands of servile or half-servile 
laborers, and bound to furnish to the state the same kind of 



196 THE EiMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. 

military or other service which was furnished by any other 
land-holding person or corporation. 

The management of such great economic and political in- 
terests called for other capacities than those of the simple 

minister of the Gospel. The great ecclesiastic 
Increased t)y ^ * 

the Feudal had, by the time of Henry III, come to be a 
Relation. prince, and since the clerical positions were 
always purel}'^ elective, the death of any such prelate was 
always the signal for electioneering on a large scale. We 
have already seen how the kings of Germany had planned 
systematically to make the great bishoprics and abbacies a 
political balance against the overgrown power of the feudal 
nobility. Nothing was more important to them than to fill 
these positions with men who should take their side in the 
conflicts which were certain to arise between the royal 
power and the local interests of the kingdom. In making 
these appointments the temptation to demand terms on the 
one hand and to go far in meeting the demand on the 
other was very great indeed. Down to Henry's time the 
accusations of bribery and corruption had been frequent and 
probably well-founded. The king's treasury was always 
empty ; the church lands were the richest and the best 
managed in the country; a candidate, supported by the 
interest of some great family, could afford to offer extremely 
good terms to the king, with a reasonable certainty that he 
could pay himself well out of the future income of his 
diocese. 

It was too much to expect that clerical positions thus ob- 
tained would be administered in anything but a worldly 

^^, ^ X spirit. The thoughts of a man put into office 
Effects of ^ * _ ^ , 

Simony upon in this way would certainly be quite as much 
tie Clergy. ^^pQ^-j ^^ aggrandizement of his see, its relations 
with the other great feudal powers and the advantage of his 
house, as upon the purely spiritual interests committed to 



c. 1040] ^^ SIMONY'' AS A PUBLIC EVIL. Y)l 

his care. Furthermore, the worldly point of view was sure 
to extend itself downward from the head to the members, 
and affect profoundly the relation of the superior to the 
whole body of his inferior clergy. If he had gained his 
place by bribery, his natural course would be to sell his own 
influence in filling these lower positions. 

Thus, if we may believe the writers of the time, whose 
evidence is supported by the witness of friends and enemies 
alike, the whole body of the church from top to 
upon Society bottom was infected with this disease of ' ' simony. ' ' 
m General. Kings sold bishoprics and abbacies ; bishops 
and abbots sold the lower places within their control, and 
so that element of the nation which ought to have held it up 
to higher standards of right was dragging it down into utter 
worldliness. It requires no special enthusiasm for the cleri- 
cal life to see that, as European society was in the eleventh 
century, this was an evil of the first magnitude. If society 
could not be held in check by the clergy it could not be 
so held at all. The historian cannot fail to see in the 
great work of the reform party, under the leadership of 
Cluny, an actual blessing of the time. However little he 
may sympathize abstractly with its methods, he must recog- 
nize the greatness of the evil and the admirable- fitness of 
those methods to meet it. 

The very first demand of the Cluny party was for the 
canonical election of the clergy. By this was meant a return 
Th Att k ^*^ what had always been, in theory, the only 
of Cluny proper way to appoint the clergy, namely, through 
uponSimony. ^^^ ^^^-^^ ^^ ^j^^ ''clergy and people" of the 

diocese, in the case of the secular clergy, and by the mem- 
bers of the order in the case of the regulars. Down to 
Henry's time, though the order of Cluny had been for three 
generations actively at work, its influence had been confined 
chiefly to France and Burgundy. It had been opposed 



198 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [-1040 

there by the highest clergy, but had succeeded in gaining a 
foothold through the silent agencies of its own houses, and 
had found among the French people as a whole a wide and 
quick response to its demands. ^ 

In Germany there had been, so far as we can see, but 
little interest in this movement. The connection of the 
SUghtlnfiu- g^'^^^ bishoprics with the political interests of the 
ence in Ger- crown, and of the local centres as well, had been 
™^^"^* too close to admit of any far-reaching spiritual 

opposition to it. The king had needed the bishops and 
they had needed him ; it had been a fair trade, and no 
serious thoughts of wrong had disturbed the consciences 
on either side. It was a case of "practical politics." 
Now, however, with the coming of Henry III, a man edu- 
cated in the learning of the church, and connecting himself 
at once by his marriage with the very centre of the strict 
monastic ideas of clerical life, the change begins. 

The assembly of 1044 is the opening shot in a campaign 

which was to last, in its original form, for a hundred years, 

and was to be continued, through other phases, 
Henry's Ac- . . . / ^^ ^ . ^ 

tion in Re- ^o^ generations afterward. However the reports 

gard to the about Henry may have been colored bv monkish 
Reform. . ^ ■' ■ 

zeal, there is no doubt that he was seriously 

impressed with the evils of the clerical life, and was disposed 

to attack them by striking at the root of simony. On the 

other hand, there is equally no doubt that he held on to the 

precious privilege of dictating the appointment of the higher 

clergy with the same tenacity that had been shown by his 

pious predecessor, Henry II, and his not over-pious father, 

Conrad II. The only difference was that he proposed 

while keeping this function, to do it with clean hands. 

Obviously, it would be more to the advantage of the crown 

to have at its service a virtuous and spiritually-minded 

clergy than a worldly and corrupt one. 



I044] CLUNY AND THE PAPACY. 199 

The decisive character was to be given to the reform 

movement by its connection with Rome. We have seen 

how, from its earUest moment, the abbots of 

Reform in Cluny had turned their attention to Rome and 

its Relation had found a reception varying greatly with the 

to Rome. , . , , • r r i • i i 

character of the party which tor the time had 
the upper hand there. To say that the papacy, as such, 
had taken up the reform with any determination or con- 
sistency, would be a gross exaggeration. The papacy was 
itself too much in need of a reform from the bottom upward 
to act with effect in any great universal cause. The only 
instance of vigorous support is in the time of Benedict VIII 
and Henry II, and how feeble and short-lived that effort 
was we have already seen. 

After Benedict VIII the papacy falls to a point lower, 
perhaps, than ever before. At all events, the Christian 
Th P world had never yet' been treated to the spec- 

under Tnscu- tacle of the supreme bishopric held by three 
an on ro . QCQ^pants at once, and that was the point 
towards which events were tending. The special scandal 
of the election of John XIX had been that he was a mere 
layman, chosen pope in order that the administration of the 
city which he had held in his hand during the papacy of 
his brother^ Benedict VIII, might not go out of the family. 
This election simply made perfectly clear that the office of 
pope was being treated as a purely worldly function, so far, 
certainly, as the affairs of Rome were concerned. The 
same policy prevailed on John's death. The Tusculan 
family put forward this time not merely a lay- 
IM3^-I044^' "^^"' ^^^^ ^ child of ten years, and this arrange- 
ment does not seem to have caused any concern 
whatever to the emperor Gonrad. During the nine remain- 
ing years of his life we find no indication that he felt 
himself called upon to remedy the ills of which- the well- 



200 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1044 

disposed, both within and without the papal circle, were 
beginning to complain. 

In fact, if this Benedict had been morally a decent 
person, it seems quite possible that the real scandal of the 
B edict IX situation, the union of political and spiritual 
driven from functions in the papacy, might not have aroused 
t e apacy. gg^-^Qug opposition. Fortunately, however, for 
the cause of reform, the youth was unable to resist the 
temptations of his position, and soon fell a prey to the 
wildest excesses. The Romans of that day could stand a 
good deal, but when it came to a rumor that the mad fellow 
was actually making negotiations for a wife, whom he pro- 
posed to set up in the sacred Lateran, the town rose in 
revolt and drove him from his place. The neighboring 
bishop of Sabinum secured some sort of election to the 
papacy as Sylvester III, "not with empty hand," and 
maintained himself for a few weeks. The Tusculan party 
brought Benedict back by force and reinstated him in 
power ; but, by this time, even he seems to have had 
_ ,. enough of it. A third party appears on the 

sells out to scene and puts forward as candidate a very 
Gregory . ^^Qj-^j-^y^ pious and learned presbyter of the 
Roman church, to whom, after some negotiation, Benedict 
agrees to sell out the papacy for a large sum in cash. The 
singular thing about this whole transaction is that the party 
which carried out this outrageous act of simony appears at 
once in connection with the Cluny reform. Gregory VI 
was the intimate friend of the abbot Odilo, and was hailed 
by Peter Damiani, the most vigorous supporter of the 
reform movement in Italy, as the saviour of the church. 
One is again tempted to doubt the testimony of the sources, 
though it is, we believe, uncontradicted. The most striking 
witness to the actual position of Gregory VI is the fact that 
he had for his private chaplain and adviser the man who 



1045] HENRY III CALLED TO ITALY. 201 

was destined to give his name to the whole great conflict, 
the monk Hildebrand. 

Again we are reminded of the situation in the time of 
Otto I, — a papacy in the control of local factions, forget- 
ting its universal character in the wild struggles 
H^nr^^m*" °^ partisan warfare ; an empire full of fresh and 
vigorous life, strong without and within, feeling 
itself called upon by its very nature to bring back the 
papacy to those universal ideas which were the only true 
reason for its being. It did not need the exhortations of the 
Roman archdeacon, who, according to one account, sum- 
moned the clergy of Rome together, protested bitterly 
against the unheard-of scandal of the situation, and then 
hastened over the Alps to persuade the king and his fol- 
lowers to come down and set it right. The very theory of 
the empire made it the duty of him who aspired to be its 
head to see to it above all things else that the church be 
sound in head and members. 

The real question was, with what interest of the clerical 

life would the young king ally himself? As to this, the 

» F' t ^^"^^^ tendency of Henry's education and his 

Italian Expe- relations hitherto pointed distinctly to the strict 

^°^' Cluny party as the one from which he would 

expect the hope of the church to arise. On the other hand, 
there was every reason to expect that Henry would have 
the clearest opinions as to the rights of his national church, 
and would not be inclined to sacrifice these to any purely 
clerical considerations. Henry's descent into Italy in the 
month of October, 1046, was entirely without resistance. 
At Pavia he held a well-attended synod, at which the great 
question of simony was doubtless considered, but we have 
no precise information about it. 

At Sutri, on the borders of the Patrimonium Petri., Henry 
halted and summoned before another synod the three 



202 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1046 

claimants to the see of Peter. Gregory VI had already 
joined the following of the king and was allowed to preside, 
Th s d ^°^ form's sake, at the assembly. Sylvester III 
atsutri. also presented himself, and was the first to be 
^^^^' tried. The synod declared that on account of his 

simoniacal deeds he should be stripped of his priestly dignity 
and end his days in a monastery. Then Gregory, called 
upon to explain his own conduct, declared himself guilty of 
simony, but excused himself by the sincerity of his good in- 
tentions. The synod voted that he should himself decide 
his own fate. Thereupon he declared himself unworthy of 
the papacy, and calling upon the synod to endorse this 
decision, he stepped down from his seat and tore in pieces 
the garments of his office. 

Benedict IX had not answered the summons of Henry, 

and had meanwhile repented of his bargain wdth Gregory 

and once more taken upon himself the papal 

Deposition of functions. The synod decided that it could not 
Benedict IX. ^ 

act in his case and the royal party moved on into 

the city of Rome. There, in St. Peter's church, another 
synod was held, and Benedict, still refusing to present him- 
self, was declared deposed. Thus, without resistance and 
under the forms of canonical law, the three claimants were 
disposed of. 

The next question was one of even greater difficulty : 
from what source was the new life of the papacy to be 
drawn.? It was the same question which had 
a German faced the Ottos, and it was answered in the 
°^^* same way. Rome had shown herself incapable 

of supplying the material for a decent and effective adminis- 
tration of the papacy in its universal character ; the popes 
of the immediate future must be sought beyond the Alps. 
Rumor had it later that the king at first offered the papacy 
to the ambitious archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, the after- 



I046] THE SYNOD AT SUTRL 203 

ward famous Adalbert, and only on his declining, proposed 

a second candidate, also a Saxon by birth, the 

Bamterg bishop Suidger of Bamberg. The first act of 

as Pope the new pope, after his peaceful inaup^uration, 

Clemens n. tt j a xy 

was to crown Henry and Agnes as Roman em- 
peror and empress. At the same time the emperor received 
from "the Romans," and placed upon his own head, the 
golden band, by which the dignity of Patricius^ and with 
this the right of naming the pope, was thought, at least by 
the imperial party, to be conferred. 

As we come into the time of the conflict between church 
and state, towards which our narrative has long been tend- 
. ing, the questions of constitutional right on the 

of our one side and the other become of increasing 

Sources. interest ; but at the same time we have to bear 

constantly in mind the difliculty of getting accurate informa- 
tion. The more interesting the point under discussion the 
more certainly shall we be misled by the partisan accounts 
that have come down to us. The whole literature of the 
next generation is affected by the bitter party question that 
lay at the root of all political movements. The characters 
of the leading personages, the precise nature of the grounds 
on which their claims rested, the very wording of the papal 
and imperial documents, all are shrouded in a mist of uncer- 
tainty which it is the business of the historian, so far as he 
can, to penetrate, but which often defies his best efforts. 

So long as Henry III lived, that is for ten years after the 
council of Sutri, the pressure of the imperial power was 
The Series strong enough to keep the appointment of popes 
of German practically in the emperor's hands. During 
°^®^' this interval four popes, all Germans by birth 

and previous connection, filled the chair of Peter. Clement 
II ruled a little less than one year, Damasus II (Poppo of 
Brixen), twenty-three days, Leo IX (Bruno of Toul) about 



204 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1049 

six years, and Victor II (Gebhart of Eichstedt) just over two 

years, his pontificate extending about a year after the death 

of Henry. The interest of this whole period is in noticing 

how resistlessly the logic of events was raising up against 

the imperial idea the very force which seemed to owe its 

whole life to the imperial support. 

The shortness of most of these administrations prevents 

us from having any clear view of a policy running through 

_,,„,. . them. Only in the case of Leo IX are we able 
Trie Policy or -' 

the German to discern, clearly outlining themselves, the 
apacy. principles of the Hildebrandine papacy. It is 

wonderful to see how, man after man, these nominees of the 
imperial party, as soon as they feel the influence of the 
great papal tradition, are swept away by it and carried over 
into combinations which only needed the skillful engineering 
of a great politician to become fatal to the power which had 
raised these popes from obscurity. 

The career of Leo IX will best illustrate this inevitable 
tendency. Bruno of Toul was a member of a noble Alsatian 

house, allied to the Franconian emperors by 
I049-I0S4 family ties and known as a vigorous advocate of 

the stricter ideas of the clerical life. When offered 
the papacy by Henry III he at first declined it, probably with 
more sincerity than we can usually attribute to such action, 
since he accepted it only on condition that the selection of 
the emperor should be confirmed by the free choice of the 
Roman people. There is no indication that his German 
predecessors had troubled themselves in the least about 
this confirmation. Leo seems clearly to have perceived that 
a pope made by an emperor was at a disadvantage in case 
of a possible difference with his master. He saw the value 
of the imperial siipp07^t and at the same time the danger of 
imperial control. On his way to Rome he visited the mon- 
astery of Cluny ; and the appearance of Hildebrand as his 



I049] L^O ^^ ^ GERMAN POPE. 205 

right hand man from the first moment of his arrival in Rome 
makes it probable that he took the monk with him from 
Clmiy. Indeed, a later tradition would have it that Leo 
was throughout only the puppet of Hildebrand ; but there 
seems reason enough to believe that he was nobody's tool, 
but rather a man fully alive to the whole meaning of the 
situation. 

On his arrival at Rome Bruno presented himself to the 

splendid escort that had come out to receive him, in the 

dress of a pilgrim, with bare feet, and followed 

elected by them thus into the city. His election was unani- 

the Romans, j^^^^g^ ^j^^ ^^ manner of it seemed to remove 

for the time the hostility of those who dreaded the overgrown 

power of the empire. 

From the first moment of his administration, Leo grasped 

the problem of the papacy as a universal one. He felt him- 

„. ^ self plainly commissioned to take up that view of 

His Con- 1 J ... 

ceptionof its mission which had inspired the policy of 
the Papacy. Nicholas I, and had hardly had a worthy repre- 
sentative since his day. In this view it was not merely the 
duty of the pope to sit still and hear complaints, but to go 
out into all the Christian world and wherever there was a 
wrong, to right it. He threw himself heart and soul into 
the fight against the all-pervading evil of a worldly priest- 
hood, determined to make his own standards those of the 
whole church. 

Hardly had he taken the time to make the most necessary 
arrangements for the papal administration at Rome, when he 

set out for France, announcing his determination 
Leo IX in ^^ \\o\^ a general synod of the French clergy and 

to take strong measures against the vice of 
simony. This determination was far from being welcome to 
the strict national party among the French clergy. The 
precious "Galilean liberty" seemed threatened by this all 



206 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT. [1049 

too thorough-going conception of the papal duty. It was a 
hundred years since a pope had been seen in France, and 
meanwhile the national clergy had thriven on its inde- 
pendence. The king, Henry I, made at first some show of 
spirit and did what he could to impede the papal plans, but 
was persuaded to withdraw his opposition. The call for a 

synod at Rheims met with little enthusiasm. On 
at RlieimT ^^ appointed day only one archbishop and very 

few, perhaps a sixth part, of the bishops of 
France appeared. On the other hand the great abbacies 
were largely represented. The ancient antagonism of regu- 
lar and secular, increased by the hostility of the episcopacy 
to the Cluny movement, is here apparent. The action of 
Leo IX at Rheims gives the key-note of his whole pontificate. 
In spite of the indifference of the French clergy, he carried 
the synod through with the same energy as if he had had its 
warmest support. ■ His first business was to summon all the 
bishops who had not appeared to give account of them- 
selves, and when this was not done, to declare them 
excommunicated. 

On the question of simony a test case was made of the 
very bishop of Rheims himself. He was called upon to 

declare how he had obtained his office, and, 

Leo's Attack ^£^gj. YViWoh. stammerins: and long consultation 
upon Simony. . . 

with his friends, declared his innocence. The 

bishop of Langres, a well-known simoniac, rather than stand 

inquiry, escaped from the city. Two other bishops who 

had been put in ofiice through money, but without their 

own knowledge, were declared innocent. The whole 

espiscopate of Brittany, charged not only with simony, 

but with the crime of wanting an arehbishop of their 

own instead of being subject to that of Tours, were 

ordered to present themselves at Rome to receive the 

judgment of the pope. 



I049] REFORM SYNODS OF LEO IX. 207 

The closely related reform in the clerical life, which was 
to be the second article in the Cluny programme — the 
Effect of celibacy of the secular clergy — was, so far as 
the Synod of we know, not touched upon by Leo at Rheims. 
Rheims. ^j^g ^j^-^^ article, the sole right of the pope to 

"invest" the bishops of all Christendom with the insignia 
of office, was barely mentioned, but not pushed. At the 
same time Leo made distinct his claim to be considered 
the sole supreme authority in the church, and specifically 
attacked a Spanish bishop for daring to take upon himself 
the title of Apostolicus. The singular thing about this 
demonstration of the papacy in France is that though it 
had been in direct opposition to the will of the government 
and the national church, yet its action was, on the whole, 
respected. From one and another of the persons directly 
attacked we find resistance or indifference, but almost all of 
them were led, sooner or later, to take account of the papal 
disapproval, and to seek some way or other of getting 
around it. In one French bishopric, on the occurrence of 
a vacancy, the pope sent a man of his own, without con- 
sultation with any one, to fill it, and we have no reason 
to believe that there was any great opposition to such an 
action. The explanation is undoubtedly that there was no 
machinery of resistance, and so little sense of a common 
interest, that no one of the parties involved could find sup- 
port among the rest. One is tempted to believe that if 
Leo had pushed his work with the whole energy of his 
character, he might have made the kingdom of France 
wholly subject to papal dictation. 

That this was not done is probably due to the multitude 
of other interests which were pressing upon this first of the 
reforming popes. 

From Rheims Leo passed over into Germany and sum- 



208 THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT [1049 

moned the clergy of that kingdom to meet him at Mainz. 

The response here was vastly more satisfactory 
German ^ ■' -^ 

Synod at than in France. The emperor gave the weight 
Mainz. q£ j^^g presence, and all the great archbishops and 

a majority of the episcopate were on hand. Leo's attitude 
was distinctly more conciliatory than at Rheims. The same 
general principles were proclaimed, but the individual cases 
of discipline were more plamly cases of moral than of ecclesi- 
astical fault. The sense of obligation to the empire for its 
service to the papacy was too recent to admit of any direct 
opposition. Yet it must have begun to dawn upon so 
clever and so vigorous a ruler as Henry III that a moment 
might come when this power which he had raised up would 
feel itself strong enough to forget all obligations and turn 
against its best supporter. 

Returned to Rome, Leo sent out a general summons to 

all whose cases he had not settled on his journey to present 

themselves before another synod at Rome. This 

Synod at assembly also was well attended, mainly, of 
Rome. ■' , . 

course, by Italian prelates, and its action was 

wholly in the line of the northern precedents. The identi- 
fication of the papacy with the reform movement was com- 
plete. It only remained to throw off all dependence upon 
the empire, to make the papal action wholly without limita- 
tions. The restless activity of Leo carried him inces- 
santly from land to land, from synod to synod. His popu- 
larity among the masses of the people everywhere, and, 
above all, in monastic circles, was immense, 
becoming a Popular legends reflect this sentiment of the 

Popular In- hour ; a cock in Benevento crowed the name 
stitntion. . _ » i • . i- 111 

01 the pope. A dog m Apulia sounded the 

praises of God by his barking. Already we discern traces 

of that alliance of the papacy with great popular move- 






[iiliiiilJiilftifciiiif 

L l! ' I it Lbf ( - 'i-Ui-- L\;i f if 




FACSIMILE OF A DOCUMENT OF POPE LEO IX. 

SHOWING BEGINNING AND ENDING. 



I049] REFORM SYNODS OF LEO IX. 209 

ments, which is the clue to its poUcy for centuries. Its 
enemies were kings and secular prelates ; its friends were 
the struggling masses of the cities, now just beginning 
to feel themselves aroused to a sense of political unity and 
. a consciousness of undeveloped strength. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Libelli de lite wiperatorian et pojitifiaim saectdi XI. 4to. From 
Monumenta Germaniae, ed. K. Francke. 

Arnulfus. Gesta archiepiscoponwi Mediolaneiisium, 925-1077. M. 
G. viii, and Mtirat. iv. — Landulfus. Historia Mediolanensis, to 
1085. M. G. viii, and Mii^-atori iv. Both these interesting Milanese 
writers defend the Ambrosian church against the Hildebrandine party, 
Landulf in a violently partisan spirit. 

Vita S. Arialdi and Vita S. E^'lembaldi, in Acta Sanctorum. Jun. s. 
Ariald was the founder of the " Pataria " as a political party and 
Erlembald was its most effective leader. Their biographies, together 
with the two Milanese chroniclers, give very valuable glimpses into 
the rising communal life of Milan. 

Vita Heiiii-ici IV. M. G. xiii, and 2d ed. 8vo. 1876. An account 
of the king, written just after his death, and highly laudatory in all 
respects. 

Bruno. Liber de bello Saxonico. AI. G. v, and 2d ed. 8vo. 1880. 
A very interesting, intensely partisan account of the Saxon war 
against Henry IV. 

Ekkehard of Aurach. Chronicon, to 1125. M. G. Vi. The most 
comprehensive of the mediaeval world-chronicles, written at the 
request of Henry V, and giving a review of the great struggle 
through which the author had lived. 

Adam of Bremen. Gesta Pontijicum IIai7imabu7-ge7isiiwi. M. G. 
vii, and 2d ed. 8vo. 1875. ^^ respect of fairness, largeness of 
view and accuracy of presentation, perhaps the best historical work 
of the eleventh century. 

Gregorii vii Registrtim, in Jaffe, Bibliotheca, ii. A very full col- 
lection of Gregory's letters, made in his own time, and here supple- 
mented by others from various sources. 



LITERATURE. 211 

BoNizo OF SuTRi. Liber ad Amicum. Jaffe, Bibl. ii. — Benzo of 
Alba. Ad Heinricum IV libri septem. M. G. xi. Two Italian 
works illustrating the two extremes of partisan feeling in Italy in 
regard to Gregory VII. 

GuiLELMUS Apuliensis. Poema de rebus Normannormn in Sicilia, 
etc. to 1085. M. G. ix. 

Amatus of Monte Casino. History of the Normans, preserved only 
in an Old-French translation. Ed. 1835. 

Damiani, Petrus. Opera Omnia, in Migne, Patrologia latina, 
cxliv-cxlv. 

DoNizo. Vita Mathildis Comitissae. M. G. xii, and Muratori v. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Lea, H. C. An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy. 2d ed. 

1884. 
Fisher, G. P. The Office of the Pope and how he is chosen ; in his 

Discussions, etc. 1880. 
ScHEFFER-BoiCHORST, P. Die Neuordnung der Papstwahl durch 

Nicolaus II. 1879. 
ZOEPFEL, R. Die Papstwahlen vom iiten bis zum I4ter Jahrhundert. 

187 1. 
Imbart de la Tour, P. Les elections episcopales dans I'eglise de 

France du IXe au Xlle siecle. 1891. 
Klemm, T. Der Englische Investiturstreit. 1880. — Schmitz, M. 

Same title. 1884. 
Cauchie, a. La querelle des Investitures dans les dioceses de Liege 

et de Cambrai. 2 parts. 1890-91. 
Meyer von Knonau. Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Hein- 

rich IV und Heinrich V. Vol. i. 1890. 
Floto, H. Heinrich IV und sein Zeitalter. 2 vols. 1855-56. A 

very favorable account, based largely on the '■'■Vita.'" 
Stephens, W. R. W. Hildebrand and his Times (Epochs of Church 

History). 1888. 
Gfroerer, a. F. Papst Gregor VII und sein Zeitalter. 7 vols. 

1859-61. A work planned on a vast scale, intended to be a complete 

survey of European history in the period, but rendered almost useless 

by violent distortion of the sources to suit the purpose of the author. 

Extreme Roman Catholic. 
Villemain, a. F. Histoire de Gregoire VII. 2 vols. 1873. 
Delarc, O., Vabbe. Saint Gregoire VII et la reforme de I'figlise au 



212 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE, [c. 1050 

Xle siecle. 3 vols. 1889. A very fair Catholic presentation of 
Gregory's career. 
Les Normands en Italie. 1S83. 



Robert, U. Histoire du Pape Calixte II. 1891. 

As we enter upon the history of the great conflict of the 
Middle Ages, the struggle betvi^een the religious and the 
The Conflict ^^^^^^^ powers, for the mastery in European 
of churcii affairs, it becomes important above all things to 
^ ^ ^* get a clear idea of the conditions under which 
this conflict was begun. It has been the purpose of the 
preceding chapters to indicate the lines along which Euro- 
pean institutions had been moving, with especial reference 
to the approaching catastrophe. We have seen the origin 
and growth of the mediaeval empire, its conflicts within 
and without, the gradual extension of its mission as the 
representative of divine order in worldly affairs and the 
great service it had rendered to Europe, by putting forth 
from time to time a strong hand to bring back the papal 
institution from a purely local to a broad and universal 
conception of its function. 

We must not, however, make the mistake of supposing 

that these moments of activity on the part of the empire 

were due to any special virtue of its own. They 
General i , i • i • r 1 

Social represent rather the highest points or a general 

Progress in toning-up of the whole social organism of Europe. 

As the feudal system passed out of its first 

stages of disorder, and began to take on the forms of 

regular legal tradition, without which no society can exist, 

we begin to notice everywhere traces of a new and more 

active intellectual life. The contact of the northern with 

the southern races had carried the germs of culture into 

every corner and, slowly but surely, the results were making 

themselves felt. The crude political ideas of a society 

purely military and agricultural were beginning to feel the 



c. loso] THE GREAT MEDIAEVAL CONFLICT 213 

impulse of a revived industry in those parts of Europe 

where ancient city-life had never quite lost its hold on the 

population, in Italy, in Southern France and in the lower 

lands of the Maas, Scheldt and Rhine. 

Until now the political action of the European powers 

had been determined almost wholly by the practical impulses 

„ . . , of o^rowing nationalities, seeking expansion at the 
Beginniiigfs of *= ^ ' . . 

PoUtical cost of their neighbors, or working out in pam- 

Theones. ^^^ struggle the problems of administration, the 
relation of parts to the whole, of local to national interests, 
of class to class. Now, dimly shaping themselves into 
form, we discern here and there signs of a theoretical 
defense of institutions, political and religious. The his- 
torian feels that he is dealing with a society which is just 
beginning to be conscious of itself. Let us observe some 
of these indications. 

We should naturally look first for signs of a thorough 
comprehension of its rights to that institution which had 

^^ r^^ preserved almost alone a continuous organic 

The Theory ^ ° 

of the life. The papacy had, to be sure, suffered. 

Papal Power, ^^^j-^j^g ^]^g tenth and eleventh centuries, long 
periods of eclipse as a force in European affairs ; but it 
had, as we have seen, already in the ninth century, made its 
declaration of rights in the form of the Pseudo-Isidorian 
decretal system, and it needed only a new impulse to set it 
moving once more along that same line. This impulse had 
come with the control of the papacy by the empire, and by 
the alliance of both powers for the time being with the 
great ascetic-popular movement. 

The Isidorian theory of the absolute supremacy of the 
Roman papacy found itself threatened by two principal 
dangers. The one was that it should get into the hands 
of local parties, which should work it wholly for their own 
interests and thus alienate from it the allegiance of Europe. 



214 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1054 

From this danger it had now just been rescued by the 

vigorous policy of the empire ; but this served to bring 

out more clearly the other danger : that it mi^ht 
The Papacy . . 

in Danger come to be only a tool of this empire, created 

from tlie by it and hence subject to its dictation. 
Empire. 

That Leo IX felt this danger is suggested, at all 

events, by his attitude in refusing to accept the imperial 
nomination until it had been confirmed by the choice of the 
Roman people. Consciously or not, he was declaring the 
principle, to which the Roman papacy has clung to this 
day : that the essence of its peculiar character lies in its 
immediate connection with the city of Rome, and therefore 
with the succession from Peter. To recognize any other 
origin, no matter how promising the momentary outlook 
might thereby become, would change the Roman papacy 
into a something else and lose for it the inestimable value 
of its unbroken tradition. 

During the rule of Leo we do not find this point further 
insisted upon, excepting in so far as he took every oppor- 
tunity of proclaiming his supremacy over all 
the Ally church powers and of demonstrating in practice 
of tlie his headship, political and military as well as 

religious, of the Roman state. At his death, in 
the year 1054, the emperor's candidate was a man who 
represented distinctly the German-imperial view of politics. 
Gebhardt of Eichstedt in Bavaria had been one of the few 
opponents of Leo in Germany, and had defended the cause 
of the national church at several critical moments. His 
election as Victor II passed off without open opposition, 
and during his short rule of a little more than a year we 
find papacy and empire in substantial agreement. Victor II 
outlived the emperor, who died, still a young man, in the 
year 1056, leaving the administration of the empire in the 
hands of the pope as guardian of his infant son, the future 



I057] THE PAPACY ANTI-GERMAN. 215 

king Henry IV. It might seem as if thus the highest ideal 

of the papacy had been reached. A pope combining in 

himself the functions of pope and emperor at once, must 

have seemed the very triumph of the policy of Leo ; but, 

in fact, this pope was rather German than Roman, likely, at 

any critical moment, to place his function as imperial vicar 

before that of supreme head of the church. 

The early death of Victor II and the practical vacancy 

of the empire was the opportunity for the anti-German 

The Anti- interest in Rome to assert itself. We have al- 

German ready alluded to that duke Godfrey of Lorraine, 

Party elects 1,111 ^ r ^• 

Pope Stephen who had played a master-stroke ot policy against 

X' the emperor by marrying the rich and powerful 

Beatrice of Tuscany. Henry III had managed to avert the 

danger of this combination, by driving Godfrey back to 

Lorraine and keeping the countess Beatrice under careful 

guard. At his death there were those who believed that 

duke Godfrey would put himself forward as a candidate for 

the empire, but if there was such a scheme it was averted. 

Next to the empire, the greatest prize was the papacy, and 

this was secured for Godfrey's brother Frederic, who had 

but just been made abbot of Monte Casino by Victor II. 

For the first time since 1046 the motion for a papal election 

came, not from the empire, but from Rome. The election 

of Stephen X was first made secure and then negotiations 

with the empress-regent in Germany were begun. This 

election represents distinctly the alliance of three great 

parties : the Roman, the papal-reforming party and Tuscany. 

The empire as such had no part in it. The crisis towards 

which events had been tending had come, and it was clear 

that the decisive word had been spoken by that party 

which has just been called the papal-reforming, but which 

we may now without fear of error begin to call the " Hilde- 

brandine." 



216 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [105S 

Later tradition, friendly as well as hostile, represents the 
policy of the papacy, from the beginning of Leo IX on, as 
„., , . , dictated by the monk Hildebrand. True or not, 
beMnd the this opinion represents the fact that there is a 

°^^' clear continuity of policy from that point through 

the short papacies succeeding, and on through the whole 
rule of Hildebrand himself, a period of more than a genera- 
tion. The key-note of this policy is a deadly hostility to 
any influence in the affairs of the papacy from any party 
whatever, outside of itself, imperial, national or Roman- 
factional. The papacy was to be thought of as an 
institution renewing itself out of its own life and resting 
upon a purely ecclesiastical basis, while at the same 
time it allowed itself absolute liberty to interfere in all 
human affairs. 

Again we have a very short administration, and again 
rumors of poisoning. Pope Stephen died in Florence on 
his way to visit his brother in the spring of 
of Pope 105S. The course of events in Rome gave color 

ic as . ^^ ^j^g accusation of murder. Once more, after 
all these years of repression, the factions of the Roman 
nobility show their hand. An alliance of Tusculans and 
Crescentians put forward a candidate of the former family, 
under the name of Benedict X, and in spite of the opposition 
of the leading clergymen of Rome succeeded in getting him 
enthroned. Hildebrand was in Germany, or perhaps already 
on his way to Rome, when he heard of these events. It 
will not be far wrong if we conclude from the conflicting 
accounts that he hastened to put himself into relations with 
the Tuscan sovereigns, and that it was through their joint 
action that the bishop of Florence was set up as a rival pope 
and. carried to Rome. The sword of Godfrey and the gold 
of Hildebrand did their work and Nicholas II was pope, 
while Benedict, summoned before his judgment-seat, con- 



I059] THE LATER AN SYNOD OF NICHOLAS 11. 217 

fessed his sin and himself threw aside the papal insignia. 
The consent of the empress-regent, obtained before the 
journey to Rome, shows that Hildebrand was not yet ready 
to break with the traditions of Henry III, but cannot be 
regarded as of much importance. 

The first great Lateran synod of Nicholas II is one of the 
most interesting in the history of the papacy. It marks the 

The Lateran ^^^^^^P^ ^^ gi^^ ^'^ ^^^ papal system a constitu- 
Synod of tional basis, by which its independence should be 
1059. forever secured and placed in the hands of a 

well-defined, limited corporation. Long before this time the 
word " Cardinal " had been familiar to the Roman church. It 
was used to designate the principal clergymen of the Roman 
diocese, but was not connected with a fixed number of indi- 
viduals. . It was never thought of as one in the orders of the 
clergy, but was an additional title, prefixed to that of the order 
to which the individual belonged, as, for instance, " cardinal- 
bishop," "cardinal-presbyter," or ''cardinal-deacon." The 
function of the cardinals had up to this time been of an 
advisory sort. They did not form a regularly organized 

ministry, but were summoned by the popes when- 
Establish- ^ . , . ^^ . . 

ment of the ever occasion for their advice arose. Their im- 

CoUegfe of portance as a college (colles:iutn) dates from this 
Cardinals. ^ ^ ^ ^ . . . 

Lateran Synod of 1059. By the action of that 

council the choice of a pope was declared to rest for the 

future in the hands of the cardinals. It is difiicult, to be 

sure, to tell the precise method of election here intended. 

The texts of the decree are in all probability corrupt and 

disagree with each other. Probably the intention was that 

the cardinals should take the initiative, and among the 

cardinals, the cardinal-bishops, that the " Roman people " 

should then express their approval, and, finally, that 

the sanction of the emperor in some form should be 

obtained. 



218 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1059 

The great opportunity for diversity of interpretation and 
the pressure of "practical poUtics " made it impossible that 

the working of this decree should be immediate 
Decree. ^^ complete. The history of papal elections 

shows that it was to be a century yet before the 
right of the college to control the electoral process was 
definitely acknowledged. Yet the immense importance of 
the principle is clear. If it could once be definitely estab- 
lished that the papacy owed its existence to the action of 
a certain small and well defined body of Roman clergymen, 
then the danger of all outward interference was certainly 
diminished, and there was reason to hope that it might be 
wholly removed. At the same time it required but little 
foresight to perceive that the same kind of scheming which 
had hitherto been applied to the immediate election of the 
pope, might now be applied to the control of the college of 
cardinals. Henceforth the politics of the papacy were to 
take on a new form, but it would be too much to say that 
the spirit of the institution was greatly changed. 

From our point of view the most important clause in the 
electoral decree of Nicholas II was that which referred to 

the emperor's share in the decision. We have 
Share of the ^ 

Emperor in two texts of the decree preserved, in both of 
ection. ^j^j(^]^ ^j-^g emperor is mentioned, in one barely 
mentioned, in the other with considerable detail. Scholars 
on both sides have done their best to confuse the issue, but 
it seems clear that the Roman party did not wish to exclude 
all reference to the empire, while on the other hand, the 
imperial party could hardly have thought of making the 
election depend primarily upon its approval. It is idle to 
suppose that the men of the eleventh century had anything 
more than a dim perception of what we call regular consti- 
tutional processes of any kind. Such arrangements as this 
were not thought of as fixing usage definitely, any more 



I059] THE ELECTORAL DECREE.— LOME ARDY. 219 

than a proclamation of the " Landfrieden " was thought of 
as an effectual bar to private warfare. They were simply 
the expression of the will of the party for the moment in 
power, and could not be expected to become effectual until 
the world should have grown up to them. 

The electoral decree must be regarded as the first great 
stroke in the Hildebrandine administration of the papacy. 
ai ^^ ^^^ ^*^^ possible for the reform party to 
Party in assume that an election, through any influence 
om ar y. |^^^ their own, was unconstitutional, or, in church 
language, " uncanonical." We have now to notice some of 
the outward supports on which the party was to rely. The 
position of Lombardy during the next century, and longer, 
was to be one of the most important elements in the rela- 
tions of the papal and imperial parties. This was partly 
owing to its geographical situation, since communication 
between Germany and Italy was possible only by ways 
leading through the valley of the Po. But there were other 
causes far more important. 

The leading influence in Lombardy had, from the last 

days of the Roman empire, been the city of Milan. It had 

lono^ been the favorite residence of emperors, 
The f . „ , . . .^ ' 

"Ambrosian " ^^"^ci commercially was, by its very situation, the 

Tradition in natural centre of north-Italian life. Its develop- 
Milan. i • , i i , ^ ^ 

ment as a clerical centre had been largely 

independent of Rome. If Rome had her Peter, so had 

Milan her Ambrose, and she looked back to him as the 

founder of her clerical institutions. The ritual of her 

church varied, in some particulars, from that of Rome, and, 

as usually happens, the trivial character of these variations 

only served to make the Milanese the more jealous of any 

encroachment upon them from any quarter. 

Under the Lombard kingdom the greatness of Milan had 

been obscured. Pavia had risen to be the capital, and the 



220 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE, [c. 1060 

predominance of an agricultural over an industrial civiliza- 
tion had reacted unfavorably upon all city-life. In the 

downfall of the Lombard kingdom, under Char- 
Milan in lemagne, and in the rise of feudalism upon its 
Lombardy. ruins, the natural advantages of Milan had again 
asserted themselves, and by the time we are now studying, 
it had become distinctly the head of all Lombard politics. 
In the reorganization of the nation by Charlemagne, the 
city had, like others, been put under a count, and this 
count had come to be regularly the bishop. The city was 
organized on a quasi-feudal basis, with the bishop at the 
head, and under him a class of the higher nobility, 
p lifcai " capitanei," whose estates were scattered about 
Organization in the neighboring country, and who had again 
° e 1 y. yj^^gj- them a lower class of petty knights, the 
" valvassores," whom we met in the time of Conrad II. 
The city population of free artisans occupied houses 
belonging to the wealthier citizens, and formed a keen and 
active community, already beginning to be conscious of its 
political existence and to claim rights in consequence. 
Already there were ominous signs of a disposition to throw 
off the feudal control of the bishop and to substitute for it 
some kind of popular government by elected officers, which 
should bring the city back to something like the old Roman 
municipal independence. 

What is true here of Milan was true also, in varying 
degrees, of the neighboring cities. They were all jealous 

of Milan, and yet looked to her for example. 
Rise of the ^^^ often for alliance. This popular movement 

has its own interest as the first wave of a great 
political and social change which was to affect most pro- 
foundly the life of Europe ; but our especial concern with 
it here is in its connection with the larger movement of 
church reform. About the year 1045, while the great 



c. io6o] THE ^'FATARIA" IN MILAN. 221 

bishop Aribo was still in office, there had cojne into 

Milan, from outside, a singular religious impulse, of a sort 

which in those days was cropping out in all parts of 

Europe, and which, for want of a better name, figures as 

" Manichean." Enough for our present purpose, that this 

impulse took the form of a protest against the organized 

clergy, but more especially against those very evils which 

the monks of Cluny were fighting on a very different line. 

Above all these " heretics," to whom whatever was material 

seemed wrong and base, declared war upon the marriage of 

the clergy, as not only leading them into those domestic 

relations which seemed to unfit them for the purely clerical 

life, but as wrong in itself. Indeed, the extremists among 

them would have had all marriage abolished, and believed 

that only those led the perfect life who were able to make 

this kind of sacrifice. 

Bishop Aribo had held a strict inquisition upon the 

new ideas and had burned many of the heretics, but had not 

been able to prevent them from reaching* the 
The "Pa- 
taria"asa rnasses of the people. They found an echo in 

Political the prevailing discontent of the lower as a2:ainst 
Party. . . 

the higher classes, and began to give at once a 

new force and character to this discontent. Popular leaders, 

the earliest known specimens of the modern demagogue, 

appeared in Milan, and by the force of eloquence roused 

the populace to fury. Under the war-cry of " down with 

the married priests !" they organized the city militia into an 

effective force and drove the bishop from the city. The 

name " Pataria," the "party of the ragamuffins," was given 

them by their enemies, but we can easily see that this 

was far from being a contemptible demonstration. Its best 

sanction lay in the alliance with the papacy, which the 

Hildebrandine party was clever enough to see would be of 

advantage both ways. 



222 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1059 

We are exceptionally well informed on these affairs, 
not only by two good Milanese historians, but also by the 
writings of the man who, more than any other, was the em- 
bodiment of this aspect of the reform movement. Peter 
Damiani, brought up as a monk, then made cardinal and 
bishop of Ostia, had been from the beginning the most 
violent advocate of sacerdotal celibacy. In the early days 
of Leo IX he had addressed to the pope a 
^ ^^ . treatise on the evils of the monastic life, for 

which he could find no more expressive title than 
the " book of Gomorrah." According to his account the 
monasteries were simply dens of iniquity, but it never once 
occurs to him that the root of the evil lay in the nature of 
the ascetic life itself. On the contrary, he believed that it 
only needed more of the true monastic spirit to set every- 
thing right. At the great council of 1059 his influence had 
procured the passage of the severest decrees against clerical 
_, marriage, and also of measures looking towards 

"Canonical the gathering of the clergy belonging to a diocese 

^* into a common house, and placing them under 

rules similar to those of monasteries. This was a revival of 
the " canonical life " of Bishop Chrodegang of Metz in the 
eighth century. Its purpose here was to make supervision 
of the private morals of the clergy more effective. 

This was the person employed by the papacy on the 

delicate mission of mediating between the furious populace 

_ . . , of Milan and the party of the bishop. His 
Damiani and r .7 r 

the Lombard account of the Lombard clergy is most signifi- 
^^^^' cant. He describes them as men of profound 

learning, dignity and piety, but stained with that fault which 
it was his business to denounce as sin, namely, the posses- 
sion of lawful wives, a description the most damaging to his 
own cause that could possibly have been given. The fate 
of Damiani' s mission illustrates very well the whole 



I020-] LOMBARDS AND NORMANS. 21Z 

situation. The ascetic enthusiasm had roused one element 
of the populace to a demonstration against the Ambrosian 
clergy; the interference of a Roman legate in Milanese 
affairs aroused another, or possibly the same element in a 
different mood, to an equally furious demonstration of 
loyalty to the Ambrosian traditions. Damiani barely 
escaped with his life, and left the parties in Milan to 
fight it out as best they might. Henceforth, in all the 
conflicts of the Hildebrandine period the ^'Pataria" was 
one of the elements on which the reform could count, but 
only as it kept in touch with the larger drift of Milanese 
politics. In so far as this movement rested upon heretical 
beginnings, this was, of course, a dangerous alliance ; but 
it is not the only case in which the policy of Hildebrand 
was willing to wink at doctrinal unsoundness for the sake 
of political advantage. 

We have thus far avoided all mention of an element in the 

politics of Italy, which was to have a vast influence on the 

future of the papacy. Our last reference to the 

The Normans j^qj-j^^^s ^^s in connection with their final 
in Italy. 

settlement along the northern coast of France, 

after having for a hundred years worried the shores of all 

the western and northern rivers of Gaul. The settlement in 

Normandy had been decisive in its effects upon the habits 

of the race. They had lent themselves with surprising 

rapidity to the influences of civilization, and the resulting 

population had, in the course of three generations, become 

one of the keenest-witted as well as one of the most warlike 

and vigorous of the European family. The main stock of 

the race had become settled, but they had not lost the old 

instinct, brought with them from their far northern homes, 

to seek new fields for adventure and profit. We still hear 

of them in many parts of southern and western Europe, 

wandering in small parties of fighting men, trying their luck 



224 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE, [c. 1030 

in this or that more or less unoccupied region, but nowhere 
gaining a foothold as permanent settlers. 

As early as the first quarter of the eleventh century, a 
party of Normans returning from the Holy Land had been 

wrecked on the coast of Italy near Salerno, and 
quaintance following the custom of the time, had hired them- 
withtiie selves out to the commander of a Greek army 

just on the way to fight the Saracens in Sicily. 
The survivors of this deed of arms carried back to Normandy 
the news of a great country, fertile in all resources, without 
stable government and much in need of good fighting men. 
After this, from time to time, considerable bodies of Norman 
soldiers are heard of in southern Italy, fighting for pay and 
plunder on one side or another of the petty conflicts which 
were there the natural state of things. The political 
organization of the country was of the loosest possible 
description. In Apulia, the name then given to the south- 
eastern part of the j^eninsula, and along the eastern coast, 
northward beyond the promontory of Monte Gargano, also 
in the southwestern peninsula, now called Calabria, the 
eastern empire still held nominal control. Its oppressive 
administration had combined with the natural incapacity of 
the inhabitants to check the development of the land, and 
had at the same time been unable to do more than hold at 
bay the forces that were pressing it from the south and from 
the north. 

Arab settlements had been made all along the western 
coast of Italy, and had taken the island of Sicily wholly 

i^to their power.' Northward, along both coasts, 
and Lombard the country was still in the hands of a group of 
Territories, pg^^y princes, remnants of the outlying duke- 
doms, which had once belonged as integral parts to the 
ancient kingdom of the Lombards. In the eleventh century 
the principal among these were Spoleto, Benevento, Capua, 



1046] THE NORMANS IN ITALY. 11^ 

Amalfi and Salerno. The relation of these states to the 
Greek empire had been a shifting one, varying from a sort 
of vassalage to entire independence. In the various efforts 
made from time to time by the German emperors to drive 
out the Greeks from Italy, they had found a fitful support 
from these degenerate descendants of the mighty Lom- 
bards. Conrad II had taken the step of making certain of 
the princes directly dependent upon himself ; but this 
relation seems not to have been of great value either way. 
What was needed in southern Italy was new blood and 
some power, strong enough and unscrupulous enough to 
clear away the existing fragments of political organization, 
and to put in their place a vigorous and permanent adminis- 
tration. This was precisely the kind of thing the Normans, 
above all peoples in Europe, were capable of 
Opportunity doing. In the year 1041 we find a new swarm 
m ta y. ^£ ^j^gj^ jj^ Italy, under the leadership of the 

sons of a Norman gentleman, named Hauteville. They 
had come at the invitation of a Lombard adventurer to 
help him in a campaign against the Greeks in Apulia ; the 
contract was that the Normans should have half the 
conquered lands for their own. It is a story of the wildest 
marauding, without a shadow of political rights or national 
feeling on anybody's part. The Normans were successful 
beyond expectation. To give themselves a show of legiti- 
macy they chose a leader of their own, William the Iron 
Arm, and he got himself invested with the title of Count 
of Apulia, by the Prince of Salerno, whose niece, also, he 
married. The Normans were becoming respectable. 

This William died in 1046, the year of the Council at 
Infeudationof ^utri, and his brother, Drogo, was not only ac- 
tlie Normans knowledged as his successor by the Normans, 
wi pu a. 1^^^ ^^^ ^jg^ received as vassal by the prince 
of Salerno and given his daughter in marriage. These events 



226 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1053 

happened just as the emperor, Henry III, had set things to 
rights in Rome and was turning his attention to the South. 
Following up the policy already begun by Conrad, he sum- 
moned the princes of southern Italy to his court and, 
assuming the right to dispose of lands which had never, by 
any fiction, belonged to the western empire, he confirmed 
the Salernian in his possessions and invested Drogo, the 
Norman adventurer, with the county of Apulia as a vassal 
of the empire. The Normans had become quite respectable. 
Within five years, by the virtue of the convenient feudal 
machinery, a gang of wandering land and cattle thieves had 
become as good princes of the Holy Roman Empire as 
any one else. 

The nominal sovereignty of the Normans soon became 
an actual one. There was no force in the whole of southern 
_. „ Italy that could make a stand against them, and 

dangerous to as soon as they were convinced of this they 
e apacy. Y^^^^xi to press more boldly towards the north. 
In this direction they came inevitably into contact with the 
papacy which at this moment, under the energetic lead of 
pope Leo IX, was beginning to revive the ambition for 
temporal power, which had been lost sight of in the squab- 
bles of the Roman factions and in the first enthusiasm of a 
purely religious reformation. The successes of the Normans 
were becoming alarming. It was the old and ever to be 
repeated story of a foreign power called into Italy as a 
savior, and then showing itself a master. All the powers 
of Italy were afraid of the Normans, but there was not 
virtue enough among them all together to combine and once 
for all to drive the invaders from the country. The pope 
Leo, like his great predecessor, first of the name, when 
Hun and Vandal threatened to destroy Italy, was the only 
person about whom what little there was of military and 
civic vigor in the land might gather. 



I053] BATTLE OF CI VI TATE. 227 

From the first moment of the Norman success, Leo had 
foreseen the danger, and had begun to seek for help in 

j-j. meeting it. He had even gone up into Germany 

against again and begged every one, from the emperor 

the Normans, ^q^^^^ ^q Jq^^^ j^jj^^ \^ ^ j^QJy ^^r against these 

enemies of mankind. Even the neighborhood of the Greek 
had seemed to him less dangerous than that of the Nor- 
man, and he had gone into negotiations with the empire at 
Constantinople to support him with a force in Italy. The 
response had not been wholly satisfactory. The Greek 
emperor could do little ; the German clergy had distinctly 
thrown cold water on Leo's scheme ; the princes of northern 
Italy had other use for their men ; the Italian Greeks could 
never be counted upon. On the other hand, the Normans 
showed every disposition to make a fight, the different 
groups among them feeling that they had here a common 
cause. Leo finally succeeded in getting together a few 
hundred Swabians, and, as these marched down the penin- 
sula, they were strengthened by additions of irregular 
troops, the kind of restless fighting material that was always 
to be found where the scent of plunder was in the air. 

Leo himself was the actual commander of these forces. 
He led them through the Beneventine territory to the 
TheBattl borders of Apulia, where the Normans had con- 
of Civitate. centrated. Hardly was it decided to join battle, 
June, I . j^iiQYi the Italian forces of Leo scattered to the 
four winds, leaving the little band of Swabians to take the 
brunt of the attack. They were cut down almost to a man, 
and the victory of the Normans was complete. Then 
followed one of those singular displays of courtesy and 
piety, which in that day went so often hand in hand with 
brutal violence and an unscrupulous disregard of rights. 
The papal party in the little castle of Civitate, trembling 
for their lives, were astonished to see the Norman leaders 



228 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1059 

approach with every sign of reverence, throw themselves at 

the foot of the pope and beg him for forgiveness. Under 

their faithful escort the pope was conducted to the city of 

Benevento, and there spent the following nine months, 

warding off perhaps by his presence a Norman assault 

upon the place. 

This attitude of Leo as military leader had not been 

altogether welcome to the strict party of the reform ; nor, 

on the other hand, was it the interest of the 
Norman ._ . . . 

Princes Normans to remam ni a permanent state or 

Vassals of hostility to the papacy. Within a very short 
the Papacy. . /,.,._. , , r t.t 

time after the death of Leo the control of Nor- 
man affairs came into the hands of two young adventurers, 
who, beginning with nothing, had risen rapidly, to be known 
as the counts Richard of Aversa and Robert of Apulia. 
This Robert v/as the famous "Guiscard" ("Slyboots"), 
from whom the race of the later Norman kings of Italy takes 
its origin. At the same moment the clever Hildebrand had 
come to see the vast advantages that might come to the 
papacy from the service of these invincible warriors, if only 
their arms might be kept within proper limits. He offered 
them the " legitimation " of their already acquired power in 
return for their promise of fidelity to the Holy See. Richard 
first, and later Robert, accepted the proposition, and at a 

synod held in Melfi, in Apulia, immediately 
Oath of the after the great Lateran synod of 1059, both 
Normans. princes appeared personally before Pope Nicholas 
H and in all form made themselves the feudal vassals of the 
papacy. The oath of Robert Guiscard is still preserved^ and 
shows in its elaborate detail of the obligations into which he 
entered, how complete this theory of papal over-lordship 
was. It was the first effective application by the papacy 
of the feudal process for securing the control of a great 

1 Mathews' Select Documents. 



c. io6o] THE COUNTESS MATILDA. 119 

territory. Richard was invested with the title of Duke of 

Capua, and Robert with that of Duke of Apulia, Calabria 

and Sicily, a title rather prophetic than, for the present, 

accurate. The relation thus established was, on the whole, 

well maintained — with many ups and downs, it is true ; 

but, in mustering the forces of the Hildebrandine party, it 

will be safe to count the Norman alliance as amongst the 

most powerful. 

Whenever the feudal tie held the Normans as it should 

do, the papacy was defended and sheltered on the south. 

^^ r. . Towards the north it found a support far more 
The Countess ^^ 

Matilda of useful and more trustworthy in the great county 
Tuscany. ^^ Tuscany, reaching from the borders of the 
papal state up beyond the Po into Lombardy. The widowed 
countess Beatrice had married for political reasons duke God- 
frey of Lorraine, and had gone thus definitely over into the 
camp of the enemies of the empire. Her daughter Matilda 
had then married Godfrey, the son of Godfrey, and so 
strengthened the same political ties. But, more than this, 
both these women had from the first been enthusiastic fol- 
lowers of the Cluny ideas. Both were women of masculine 
energy, devoted with fanaticism to the religious life and 
ready to lend all the resources of their state to the cause of 
Rome, as soon as that cause had come to be identified with 
that of reform in the religious world. In a letter of Hilde- 
brand to the countess Matilda he said he should advise her 
to enter a nunnery, were it not that she was indispensable to 
the cause of the church. In all the long conflict with the 
empire the land of the ''great countess" lay as a barrier, 
often a most effectual one, to military expeditions, and the 
popes of the reform were never without a safe shelter from 
violence so long as they could reach the protection of the 
Tuscan frontier. 

Such were the chief resources of the papacy in the life 



230 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1073 

and death struggle with the temporal power upon which it 
Summary of ^^^ ^^^ about to enter: the idea of ecclesias- 
tlie Papal tical reform on the basis of a celibate clergy 
esources. elected without the use of money or violence, and 
inducted into its office by clerical hands alone ; the " Pataria" 
in the cities of northern Italy ; the wealth and enthusiasm of 
the countess Matilda in the centre, and the political interest 
of the Normans in the south of the peninsula. To these 
must be added the discontent of subjects in every country 
in Europe where the conflict was threatening, carefully 
utilized and directed by the papacy to its own ends. 

These vast resources were now to be put into combined 
action by the genius of a great man. The personality of 

T,, TO IJildebrand, judged in his own time with all the 

Tne Person- ' ^ ° 

ality of prejudice of inordinate enthusiasm or of bitterest 

^ ^^^ ' hatred, has come down to us in this double light 
and defies all efforts to describe it in any one simple for- 
mula. However we may look at it, his is a figure of great 
human interest. He is one of those few commanding spirits 
that from time to time seem to gather up into themselves the 
prevailing forces of their day and bring them all to bear upon 
some one central point. There can be no doubt, whatever, 
that the character of Hildebrand, as we find it in the litera- 
ture of his time, is grossly distorted. The heated passions 
of the moment are felt in almost every mention of his 
actions. We have to judge him by his acts and by the 
evidence of his own writings. 

The common impression that the papal policy from the 
fall of Gregory VI onward was largely influenced by Hilde- 
brand is probably correct. As to his early life 

e ran s ^^ ^^.^ ^ much in the dark. He was probably 
Development. ■> . 

of Roman birth, though his name suggests a 

Teutonic origin. He was brought up as a monk, and his 

hope for the world rested throughout upon monkish ideals ; 



I073] EARLY CAREER OF HILDEBRAND. 231 

but from the first we find him acting in administrative 
capacities. His monasticism was not that of the cell, but 
rather that of the council or the camp. His relations with 
Gregory VI, the man of Cluny, who bought the papacy that 
he might reform it, are obscure. He went with him into 
exile, and appears again on the scene only when Leo IX 
begins his administration. His office was that of deacon ; 
in other words, he was concerned in the practical side of 
the papal business. He showed a capacity for finance, 
which brought upon him the reproach of corruption, but 
which, in the existing disorder of the papal revenues, was a 
most valuable gift. At about the time of the electoral de- 
cree of 1059, Hildebrand was promoted to be archdeacon, 
still in the same line of affairs, and in this office he remained 
until his election to the papacy in 1073. The worst charge 
TT-,^ ^ J. ap-ainst Hildebrand is that which is sure to be 
Unscrupu- made against all great administrators, that he 
ousness. ^^^ unscrupulous in his methods. It would 
perhaps be equally true to say that all considerations 
seemed unimportant to him as compared with the great end 
he had set before himself. For example, he was not a 
theologian, and was inclined to overlook even heretical 
tendencies rather than lose the chance for an ally. He 
joined hands with the Lombard Patarini ; he tried his best 
to carry Berengar of Tours through the storms of his perse- 
cution ; he even incurred the suspicion of heresy himself, 
because, in his zeal, he had declared that the administration 
of the sacraments by a simoniacal priest was invalid. 
Doubtless he sought his allies where he could find them, 
and excused himself for apparent fickleness by the great- 
ness of his need. 

The administration of Nicholas II is one unbroken series 
of attempts to enforce in every country of Europe the 
principles of the reformed papacy. In Italy, the infeudation 



232 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1073 

of the Normans was accompanied by the holding of several 
Tlie Refor ed synods in southern Italy, at which the purity of 
Papacy and the ecclesiastical life was insisted upon with 
the Nations, ^^j ^j^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^eo himself. In the north, the 

mission of Damiani to the Milanese falls in this period, and 

though the political element of the affair had 
Italy. , . 

well-nigh ruined the religious aim, still Damiani 

reports that he had gained a formal agreement from the 

archbishop to aid in the good work. 

In France, where king Henry I in his last days had 

sanctioned the holding of two reform synods, the principles 

of no-simony and of sacerdotal celibacy had 
France. . 

been proclaimed, but the government had plainly 

shown its determination to maintain the headship of the 
Galilean church. With William of Normandy, who had 
been excommunicated on account of his marriage with a rel- 
ative, Nicholas managed to make a good bargain, by which 
the excommunication was removed on condition that the 
duke should found a monastery. In England, a controversy 

as to the investiture of an archbishop of York 
England. • . . 

was decided in favor of the national party. In 

all these cases we plainly discern a policy of mildness 

wherever the national interest was vigorously insisted upon. 

Of all the European countries, however, Germany was, at 

this moment, the one with which it was most important that 

the papacy should keep in sjood relations. The 
Relations ^ • c \ r. \ - ti 

with, the claim of the German kmg over Italy made con- 
German flicts almost inevitable, while, on the other hand. 
Kingdom. , 1 • i • 1 r 1 • 1 

the admitted right of the papacy to sanction the 

imperial coronation gave it a handle which at this precise 

time it was not likely to neglect. The internal politics of 

Germany, too, were in such shape as to offer 

the most tempting opportunity for interference. 

The all too early death of Henry III had left the govern- 



1056-1061] THE PAPACY AND THE NATIONS. 233 

ment in the hands of the empress Agnes as regent for 

her six-year-old son Henry. This Agnes, a woman of 

culture and piety, was utterly unfit to meet the great diffi- 

^ - culties of the situation. She committed the 
Regency of 

Agues of error, fatal to any regent, of surrounding herself 
Poitiers. ^^\\\\ counsellors who were out of touch with the 

real governing forces of the state. The weight of German 
politics lay, as we have already seen, in the harmonious 
working together of the great territorial lords with the 
leading members of the higher clergy. That government 
alone could be successful which should succeed in main- 
taining this harmony. The local powers could not be 
coerced ; they could only be conciliated. The royal power 
had not struck its roots very deep into the political con- 
sciousness of Germany. 

The turning-point in the relations between Germany and 
the papacy was the Lateran Synod of 1059. Although one 

^^ ..... . mip-ht have expected resistance from the im- 

The Attitude & ^ 

of the German perial government to these Lateran decrees, it 
Clergy. 10 9. ^^^^ -^^ i^^oX^ the German clergy which took up 
the national cause. Without the knowledge, so far as we 
are informed, of the empress, a synod of German clergy- 
men promptly repudiated the whole action of the Roman 
council, declared the pope Nicholas deposed and ordered 
his name to be omitted from the public prayers. Even the 
empress was so far carried along by this current that a 
papal ambassador, sent express to inquire into the meaning 
of such action, was left for five days outside the royal court 
and sent home without an answer. 

The test of the working of the Lateran decrees came 

within two years, upon the death of Nicholas 

PopeAlexan- IL The Roman nobility, forgetting their party 

er . 1061. in^gj-ests for the moment, sent up at once to 

the regent, begging her in the name of the young king 



234 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1061 

as Patricius of Rome, to nominate the new pope. The 

regent, plainly not eager to take so weighty a step, put off 

the decision until a council could be held.. Meanwhile 

Hildebrand, after a delay of three months, determined to 

follow out to the bitter end the policy already begun, and 

without consulting the empress or the Roman party, relying 

upon the moral support of the cardinals and the physical 

backing of several hundred Normans, carried through the 

election of Anselm of Lucca, as Alexander II. 
106I-1073. 

This Anselm was a Milanese, the chief supporter 

of the Pataria and the intimate friend and counselor of the 
house of Tuscany, thus combining in himself the chief 
elements of strength on the Hildebrandine side. 

The German council came together at Basel and, first 
declaring the young king to be the Patricius of Rome, 
Election of rejected the election of Alexander II and then, 
Cadalusof upon the proposition of Lombard bishops, 
(Honorius II). elected bishop Cadalus of Parma, who called 
106I. himself Honorius II. Thus the issue was clearly 

defined. Empire and papacy, apparently working together 
in such edifying harmony for the reform of an evil world, 
had developed the germs of dissension that lay concealed 
in the very theory of the two powers, and the war was 
declared. The attitude of Germany had never been so 
openly defiant of Rome as now ; but the change from the 
conditions in the time of Otto I or of Henry III was pain- 
fully apparent. Instead of the vigorous support which 
either of those rulers would have given to his words, we 
have only the most pitiful shilly-shallying with a cause that 
needed the utmost energy. Cadalus was left entirely to his 
own resources, and it was six months before he found 
himself strong enough to advance upon Rome. When 
at last, with the help of Lombard weapons and gold, he 
had made his way into the city, and seemed upon the 



io62] THE GERMAN REGENCY. 235 

verge of a complete triumph, he was suddenly confronted 
by the duke Godfrey of Tuscany and forced to with- 
draw to Parma to await the judgment of the king. 
Alexander II was compelled to submit himself to the 
same tribunal. 

The explanation of this sudden reversal of positions is 
to be found in the revolution which had meanwhile taken 
place in Germany. The administration of the 
S^Urow of empress had given the widest dissatisfaction in 
the Empress- the country, and had called forth an opposition, 
of which archbishop Hanno of Cologne had 
become the centre. While Cadalus had been fighting and 
buying his way into Rome, the clever Hanno had taken 
advantage of a visit of the court to his diocese to invite the 
young king to inspect a pleasure boat, which he had set 
up on the Rhine. As soon as the lad was safely on board, 
the oarsmen were ordered to give way and the boat started 
for Cologne. The plucky youth, seeing himself entrapped, 
threw himself into the water and struck out for the shore, 
but was pulled on board again and carried safely to the 
residence of the archbishop. 

With the king in his hands, it was comparatively easy for 
Hanno to declare himself the head of a commission of 
Res-e regency and to secure the definite retirement of 

of Hanno and the empress Agnes from the conduct of affairs. 
e IS ops. y^^ ^^^ obliged to use constitutional language in 
speaking of these matters, but it is plain that the constitu- 
tion of Germany, if we may so call it, had no place for a 
regency. A regency is an idea completely identified with 
the notions of an inherited kingdom, and these notions were 
(as we have been seeing) foreign to the spirit of German 
political life. The principle of German unity is to be 
sought, not in its monarchy, but in the sense of a common 
interest among its princes, and in the year 1062 the best 



236 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1062 

representatives of that common interest were to be found 

among the great bishops. 

There seems to have been no good reason why the 

German princes should not have taken the same action that 

„ ,.^. , ^. had already saved the state at several similar 
Political Dis- -^ 

integration crises and chosen for their king a powerful man 
m Germany, ^j^^ might have united the country and carried 
on the policy clearly outlined by Conrad II and Henry III. 
Perhaps a sufficient explanation is to be found in the 
immense increase in the power of the higher clergy and the 
presence in that body at the same moment of several quite 
extraordinary men. Hanno himself, Adalbert of Bremen, 
Siegfried of Mainz, were a trio that might well feel itself 
capable of taking upon its own shoulders the care of an 
empire. For the moment the regency passed into the hands 
of the whole body of the German clergy, with the under- 
standing that the bishop in whose diocese the king should 
for the time be living, should be the responsible manager 
of public affairs: — a singular comment upon the strength 
of this clerical element in the state. 

Plainly, however, such an arrangement could never last 
long, and the regency soon passed practically into the hands 
Regency of <^f Hanno and Adalbert of Bremen. A German 
Hanno of synod at Aupfsburpf, iust a year after the elec- 
Cologneand ] r .^ j 1 j -r .- 

Adalbert of tion of Cadalus, passed measures so conciliatory 

Bremen. ^h^t they amounted to a practical recognition of 

the Roman electoral college as the only true source of the 
papal power. This conciliatory attitude, apparently the 
work of Hanno, was further carried out in the following 
spring at a general council, summoned by the German 
government at Mantua, in the dominions of Beatrice of 
Tuscany. The calling of a council under German influence 
to settle the question of the papacy was clearly against the 
policy of Hildebrand, but the gains were greater than the 



1065] HENRY IV KING OF GERMANY. 237 

loss, for at Mantua pope Alexander, called to account 
for the means of his accession, made a good defense and 
was declared true pope. The cause of Cadalus was 
definitely dropped. The regency had succeeded in main- 
taining its right to judge a papal election, and had rather 
strengthened itself than otherwise by accepting the pope of 
the cardinals. 

While Hanno had been in Italy conducting this delicate 
piece of diplomacy, the management of affairs in Germany 

„ . ,^ . had been left in the hands of Adalbert of 
Majority of 

Henry IV. Bremen, whose influence over the young king, 
^^^ ' now, at fifteen, declared of age, was beginning 

to overshadow that of Hanno. If we are to believe the 
writers hostile to Henry, we have in this fact the clue to 
much of his later ill-fortune. Adalbert, they say, systemat- 
ically ruined the youth by letting him have his way in every 
particular, while Hanno, a stern moralist, tried, by severity, 
to keep him straight. This is a simple way of writing 
history, but we shall have little profited by our previous 
study, if we fancy that the complications of Henry's 
troubled reign can be so easily explained. On the other 
hand, it will not perhaps be far out of the way if we con- 
clude that the anti-papal policy of the king was greatly 
influenced by the counsels of a prelate whose sense of the 
national rights was so strong that he has even been accused 
of wanting to set up a great northern patriarchate in defi- 
ance of Rome. 

In the ten years between the majority of Henry and the 
beginning of the conflict with Hildebrand, one can, without 

great difliculty, note the development of the con- 
HeM-y^*r7 ^ ditions under which the fight was to open. If 

it had been an almost impossible task for such 
men as the Ottos, Conrad II and Henry III, to keep their 
heads above the waters of internal conflict, how much more 



238 THE PARTIES IN THE GREAT STRUGGLE. [1065 

for a clever but headstrong youth, just coming out of the 
leading-strings into a sense of his royal rights. The declara- 
tion of his majority did not set him free. In every direction 
he found himself fettered by interested advisers. A wife, to 
whom his father had bound him almost in his cradle, was 
now forced upon him as a measure of state policy. Enemies 
beset him at every turn ; it was little wonder that a youth of 
spirit should have his fling with a vengeance and throw him- 
self then into the hands of the men who would do what he 

^. ^ wished. Excepting Hildebrand himself there is 

Diver§:ent , . 

Descriptions no one in this period whose character has come 
° ™' down to us more distorted by party hatred. His 

biography, written by a warm personal admirer, represents 
him as a long-suffering man, driven into corners all his life 
by the craft of his enemies, but rising superior to calamity 
by the purity of his personal character. The accounts of his 
enemies, as, for instance, that of Bruno the Saxon, picture 
him as a fiend incarnate, revelling in every form of vice and 
corruption — an enemy of the church and of his people 
alike. Setting both these descriptions aside, the historian 
must see in Henry IV a man of more than ordinary ability, 
called upon to face extraordinary difficulties which not he, 
but the whole course of events for two generations, had pre- 
pared, with no solid party upon which he could rely, threat- 
ened by rebellion and treason in his own household, and 
yet making head against all resisting forces, and, through a 
very long reign, keeping them at bay. 

Through the remainder of the pontificate of Alexander II 
the politics of Italy were shaping themselves as they were 

_ „ to stand during the next generation. The con- 

Causes of . 

Conflict in flicts of the Pataria had brought out fairly the 

^' question whence the bishops of the Lombard 

cities were to draw their authority. On the death of bishop 

Guido of Milan, his party had sent up into Germany to get 



io6s] CHARACTER OF HENRY IV. 239' 

from Henry the sanction of their choice, while the Patarini, 
supported by Rome, had put forward their candidate. 
Again the interference of Rome had brought out popular 
resistance and the bishop of the Pataria had been driven 
out. The anti-pope, Cadalus of Parma, died in 1072, and 
was succeeded in Parma by a German. Wibert, formerly 
imperial chancellor in Italy was made bishop of Ravenna. 
In all directions the imperial party was keeping the upper 
hand. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. 

1073-1122. 

LITERATURE. 

See Chapter VII. 

At the death of Alexander II the moment had come when 

Hildebrand could step forth from behind the screen which 

_, ^. . until then had served 'to mask his real control 
Election of 

Hildebrand as of affairs. His own story of his election as a 
Gregory . spontaneous outburst of affection and confidence 
on the part of the Romans is so strongly tinged with the 
conventional modesty usual in all such accounts -that we 
need pay little attention to it ; surely the acts of the man, 
when he found himself in the saddle, do not suggest an 
over-sensitive consciousness of limifations. . The only point 
we need notice is that the election was a tumultuous affair, 
settled with indecent haste, and without consultation with 
the imperial power. Indeed, it makes little difference as to 
form ; the later accusations on this point were rather pre- 
texts than arguments. 

In letters written hither and thither to intimate friends 
and supporters, Gregory at once announces his election and 

declares his intention to send ambassadors to 
Gregory's 
Attitude Henry, not to beg the favor of his support, but 

toward the to demand his submission as a faithful son to 

the voice of the mother church. If he fail to 

listen, then will the successor of Peter know how to do his 



I073] GREGORY'S ATTACK ON HENRY IV. 241 

duty. It is clear, therefore, that from the first moment of 
his administration Gregory had determined not to wait for 
events but to push forward with all speed his plans for an 
unheard-of expansion of the papal rights. The precise date 
of his consecration is doubtful, but it seems probable that 
it was before any formal approval had been received from 
Henry. The edict of 1059 — probably Hildebrand's own 
work — -seemed to be wholly forgotten. 

Whatever may have been the intentions of the young king 
in regard to the papacy, he was at the moment in no con- 
dition to enforce them. His whole strength was needed to 
meet the most dangerous rebellion that had as yet threat- 
ened the German kingdom. In previous rebellions the 
question had generally been a dynastic one, in the interest 
of one or another local family ; in this case the causes of 
complaint were of a sort that appealed to the whole people 
of a land from which until now the kingdom had received 
its best support. The accounts of the Saxon wars, drawn 

almost wholly from the narratives of Lambert 
Rebellion in . ^^ ... , _^ . ^^ ^ 

Saxony of Hersfeld and Bruno or Merseburg, are, espe- 

against ciallv in the latter case, so colored by the bitter- 

Henry rV. / 1 r , T • 1 ^ 

est hatred or the kmg, that we are at a loss to 
make out clearly the actual connections of cause and effect. 
Even Bruno has nothing to say against Henry HI, so that 
the jealousy of a race which had lost the kingdom, after 
having held it gloriously for five successive reigns, cannot 
have been the prime motive in this case. Henry HI had 
passed much of his time in Saxony, had left the dukedom 
there in the hands of a great local family, the Billings, and 
had drawn from the Saxon clergy, especially from the church 
at Goslar, some of the foremost bishops of the kingdom. 
Yet he had very much favored the ambitious bishop, 
Adalbert of Bremen, who was in continual conflicts with 
the^se Saxon dukes, and perhaps we may find in this antago- 

/ 



242 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1074 

nism one, if not the main, source of Saxon discontent. The 
chief accusation against his son was that he had 
the Saxons built royal castles throughout the land, in which 
against thej }^e had left turbulent garrisons who preyed upon 
the goods of the inhabitants and worried their 
domestic peace. There is a popular tone in these com- 
plaints, which makes one incline to place them in line with 
popular demonstrations, which, in varying forms, are crop- 
ping out in many parts of Europe. The people are begin- 
ning to be an element for statesmen to reckon with. 

The Saxons presented themselves to the papacy as sub- 
jects oppressed by a tyrannous and unscrupulous king. 
This was precisely the kind of case which 
between the ^^^ always been welcome to ambitious popes. 
Saxons and Henceforth, during the whole of his administra- 
tion, Gregory did his best to keep alive the 
Saxon enmity, and we can trace with considerable accu- 
racy a regular ebb and flow in the fortunes of the king, 
according as this combination against him worked well or 
ill. Already, in the last days of Alexander II, an indirect 
blow had been struck at Henry by a decree of excommuni- 
cation against certain of his counselors whose influence 
was adverse to the papal plans. Gregory found the occasion 
for action, therefore, ready to his hand. At the moment 
when Henry was at his wits' end how to avert the threat- 
ening storm in Saxony, the pope summoned the clergy of 
Germany to meet his legates at a council, over which the 
legates should preside, and which should definitely settle all 
existing causes of difference. Henry seemed inclined to 
give way, but the German clergy, under the lead of Mainz 
and Bremen, once more showed itself the best representative 
of the national cause. They refused to hold any council at 
the bidding of the pope or under the presidency of his 
legates. 



1075] PROHIBITION OF lAY-INVESTITURE. 243 

It was, of course, the cue of the papal party to represent 

this refusal as inspired by fear, lest a council so organized 

^^ , ^ should find the chiefs of the German clergy 

TheLateran ^^ 

Synod of guilty of those crimes which the reformed papacy 
^^* ■ was attacking. ■ But the first great public demon- 

stration of Gregory VII showed that the real question was 
not, by any means, the clerical character of this or that 
prelate, but the very essence of the clerical character itself. 
At the Lateran Synod of 1075, we have the first papal 
proclamation of the prohibition of Lay Investiture. This 
element of the reform had already been brought forward in 
local synods, but was now to be made the chief point about 
which the efforts of Gregory were to turn. In no respect is 
the political sagacity of Gregory more clearly shown than in 

throwing; the weight of the papal cause upon this 
The ProMW- , , ^, * . . ,, ^ , . , 

tionofthe demand. I he '^ mvestiture 01 a bishop or 

Lay-Investi- abbot was a process quite distinct from his 
election. The election might have taken place 
as canonically as possible ; the candidate might be the 
purest being under the sun, but, if he was to receive the 
ultimate sanction of his position from any layman whom- 
soever, the final hold of the papacy upon him was still 
insecure. Gregory discerned with great shrewdness that 
here lay the secret of national opposition to Rome. He had 
had a chance to see the working of it in every country of 
Europe. The college of bishops, owing to the govern- 
ment the allegiance due to the power from which they 
derived their sanction, had been the chief obstacle to 
the reforming programme. If now this sanction could 
be ' kept in the hands of the papacy, it might well be 
hoped that the allegiance would go with it, and the 
possibilities opened up by this transfer were such as 
might well dazzle the imagination of any party that hoped 
to reap its benefits. 



244 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1075 

If the final control over the appointment of all the higher 
clergy could be vested in the papacy, there must soon cease 
to be a national clergy in any country. The tie 
"Dictatus between king and clergy was broken, and the 
Fapae. papacy might count upon a spiritual militia within 

every Christian country owing its existence to Rome, and 
subject therefore to Rome's lightest wish. That this is no 
fancy picture of the Gregorian programme is proved by a 
very curious document which comes to us in the manuscripts 
of Gregory's letters, and seems to have been a series of 
headings largely drawn from Pseudo-Isidore, which, taken 
together, form what we might call the " platform " of his 
party. 

THE ''DICTATUS FAPAE." 

1. That the Roman church was founded by God alone. 

2. That the Roman bishop {^pontifex) alone is properly called 

universalis. 

3. That he alone may depose bishops and reinstate them. 

4. That his legate, though of inferior grade, takes precedence of 

all bishops in council, and may give sentence of deposition 
against them. 

5. That the pope may depose (bishops) in their absence. 

6. That we may not even stay in the same house with those who 

are excommunicated by him. 

8. That he alone may use the insignia of empire. 

9. That the pope is the only person whose feet are kissed by 

all princes. 

1 1. That he bears a name which is unique in the world. 

1 2. That he may depose emperors. 

13. That he may, if necessity require, transfer bishops from one 

see to another. 

1 6. That no synod may be regarded as a general one without his 

consent. 

17. That no scripture {capitulunt) and no book maybe called 

canonical without his authority. 



I075] SCOPE OF GREGORY'S POLICY. 245 

1 8. That his decree may be annulled by no one, but that he alone 

may annul the decrees of all. 

19. That he may be judged by no one. 

20. That no one may dare to condemn a person who appeals to 

the apostolic see. 
22. That the Roman church has never erred, nor ever, by the 
witness of scripture, shall err, to all eternity {in perpetuunt). 

26. That he may not be considered catholic who does not agree 

with the Roman church. 

27. That he may absolve the subjects of the unjust from their 

allegiance. 

From this scheme it is clear th'at the aim of Gregory's 
policy was nothing short of a complete subjugation of every 
V t s f ^^^^h^y power to the final arbitration of Rome. 
Gregfory's If it could have succeeded we should have had 
° ^^' in Europe simply a monstrous theocratic govern- 

ment, with its centre at Rome and its branches reaching out 
into the remotest corners of every Christian state. Such a 
theocracy, holding in its hand all the learning of the day, 
supported by the only compact legal system then in exist- 
ence and able at any moment to call down upon its enemies 
all the spiritual terrors that a superstitious age most dreaded, 
might well seem to realize the political ideal towards which 
the Roman church from the time of Gregory the Great had 
been moving. Such an ideal was utterly opposed to any 
variety in human life; nationality, with its appeal to local 
patriotism and its encouragement of differences in develop- 
ment of every kind, was the natural enemy of such a scheme. 
And even more hostile must be all that wide-reaching 
activity, which we call "individualism"; a thinking man 
was the most deadly foe that such a dead-leveling plan 
could raise up against itself. 

The mere announcement of a programme like this would 
probably have been fatal to Gregory's hopes and there is no 



246 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1075 

evidence that it was ever put forth before the world. Its 
value to us is as a summary of the ideas which underlay 
Special Hos- ^^^ ^^^^^^ working policy of Gregory VII. 
tilityto There is no one of his acts as supreme pontiff 

ermany. which cannot in one way or another be brought 
under some one of the rubrics of the " Dictatus." The 
proclamation against the lay investiture was a general one, 
directed no more against Germany than against every 
Christian state; but circumstances had combined to make 
Germany a particularly tempting mark for the papal 
weapons. The fact alone that Germany laid a claim to the 
empire, as yet practically uncontested, pointed her out as 
the country in which a victory of the papal ideas would be 
especially valuable. Further, there was a prospect that the 
prime condition of papal success, the alliance with rebellious 
subjects, could better be attained in Germany than elsewhere. 
The decree of 1075 reached Germany at a time when its 
effect could hardly be very satisfactory. Henry had just 

come out of his first brush with the Saxons 
Henry IV 
neglects the entirely victorious. The rebel army had been 

Decree of defeated in battle, the Saxon chiefs had been 
1075. 

captured and were in safe-keeping in the hands 

of trusty persons in various parts of the kingdom. Naturally 
this victory had not been "gained without exciting new 
enmities, which were sure to be used against the king, but 
for the moment Henry was stronger than at any time since 
his accession. The tone of his correspondence with 
Gregory at this time is so moderate and conciliatory that it 
brought upon him later the accusation of double-facedness, 
but it would seem to be rather the language of a prince who 
had no wish to provoke a conflict, though he was fully pre- 
pared to maintain his rights in case of attack. Still as 
before we find Henry investing the highest clergy with their 
offices; a bishop of Bamberg, the abbots of Fulda and 



I076] RESISTANCE IN GERMANY. IM 

Lorsch in Germany, the bishops of Spoleto, Fermo and 
Milan in Italy, all received their investiture after the decree 
of 1075 and entered upon their offices as direct dependents 
of the empire. At the same time it is to be noticed that all 
these candidates were persons of unblemished character and 
were put into their places without a suspicion of simony. 
Indeed the efforts of Gregory to remove the former bishop 
of Bamberg on the charge of simony had been heartily 
seconded by Henry. In short we have here simply the 
continuation of the policy of Henry III, to appoint the 
higher clergy, but to do it with clean hands. It seems 
altogether likely that if Henry III had lived out his time, 
the investiture conflict would have arisen just the same; the 
outcome of it might have been different. 

The open conflict between king and pope was delayed as 
long as possible under the formalities of a secret corre- 
spondence, in which both parties seem to feel the 
Open Conflict .... , , , ,, 1 , • 

between mevitabie outbreak, but equally to dread it. 

King and Each sought in secret to test the natural allies of 
Pope. ... 

the other. Henry kept in touch with Milan and 

even sent proposals to the Normans, that they should trans- 
fer their feudal allegiance from the pope to himself. The 
old Roman party, always nursing its hostility to the papacy, 
began to show its hand under a member of the Crescentian 
family. It was not a favorable moment for the papal 
attack, but Gregory could delay no longer. In the first days 
of the year 1076, ambassadors from him reached Henry at 
Goslar, bringing a formal letter and also verbal instructions 
to the effect that the king must renounce his right to the 
investiture of bishops, must banish the excommunicated 
counselors from his court, and must present himself before 
the pope to seek absolution for his notorious sins. If he 
should do this the pope would go no further ; if not, then at 
the next Lenten Synod the threatened excommunication 



248 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1076 

should surely come. It will be noticed that the pope, 
following the precedents of Nicholas I, made the whole 
matter turn upon the personal character of the king, 
thus supplying the pretext of moral discipline which 
had always been the entering wedge of the papal diplo- 
macy. 

The reception of the papal assault in Germany was dis- 
couraging in the extreme. The king and his council, 

. . especially the clerical members, displayed a vigor 

Enthusiasm and a sense of nationality altogether surprising. 

m Germany. ^/^^i-^Qut a moment's hesitation they determined 

to make this a national question and to lay it before a 

council of German bishops, to be called by the king as early 

as possible. The result was the Council at Worms, held in 

the month of January, 1076. An immense 

Council at majority of the German clergy, both secular and 

Worms. regular, answered the summons, and the action 

1076. ., . . , 

of the council seems to have been surprismgly 

prompt and unanimous. The accusation against the pope 

was presented by an Italian, the cardinal Hugo {Candidus)^ 

and consisted in a sweeping arraignment of his past life, his 

uncanonical election, his abuse of power in all directions, 

and especially the unheard-of innovation that he alone is the 

source of the episcopal power. Thereupon the bishops and 

the king declare themselves absolved from their allegiance to 

Gregory, and in an elaborate defense explain their reasons, 

dwelling with especial emphasis upon obligations into which 

Hildebrand was said to have entered that he would never 

allow himself to be made pope. The letter of the bishops 

was sent on to Rome with another from the king enforcing 

its positions and declaring the pope deposed from his office. 

At the same time Henry sent another letter to the "Romans" 

urging them to give him their support and to withdraw their 

allegiance from Gregory. 



I076] NATIONAL COUNCIL AT WORMS. 249 

The careful student of this correspondence cannot fail to 

be struck by the emphasis which on both sides is laid upon 

t ^^ personal character of the opponent. The 

Issue pope demands from the king a public absolution 

avoided. ^^j. j^-^ ^-^^^ ^j^^ banishment of evil counselors 

and a proper treatment of his subjects. The king will 
depose the pope because he is a bad man, who has got his 
office uncanonically, who has usurped rights over the Roman 
people and who leads an immoral life. The real constitu- 
tional questions, which alone can interest us, are held in the 
background. If, however, we have followed the continuity 
of events, the true issue cannot be doubtful. The empire 
could get on very well with an indifferent pope, provided it 
were left in the enjoyment of its local political rights; the 
papacy cared little whether a king were good, bad or indif- 
ferent, so long as its prerogative could be maintained and 
extended. The moral grounds were on both sides a pretext, 
not a reason, and, therefore, the labors of the advocates of 
king and pope to show that these grounds were not well 
taken were and are so much wasted trouble. 

To such an attack as this of the Germans there could be 
but one answer. The Lenten Synod at Rome received 
the letters of the bishops and the king with 
deposes and ^^^^ wildest demonstrations of hostility. Only 
excommtmi- Gregory's personal protection saved the ambas- 
sadors from instant death. With the approval 
of the synod the pope issued at once a formal decree of ex- 
communication against the king, and released his subjects 
from their allegiance to him. By this action the theory of 
the relation of the two parties was completely reversed. 
The bishop of Rome was no longer the chief prelate in a 
state, to the head of which he was responsible ; rather, the 
state was a subject of the papacy, and all the bonds between 
ruler and subject might be loosed at any moment by the 
mere will of this all-powerful dictator. 



250 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1076 

Undoubtedly this theory of the papacy had been greatly 
strengthened by the development of feudal ideas. The 

ease with which the allegiance of any vassal 
Feudal Ideas ^ovXd. be transferred from one lord to another 
on the i^ad accustomed society to this loose conception 

of all political relations. If allegiance was in- 
deed a thing depending upon conditions and not upon an 
essential union of rights and duties, then, if subjects could 
be persuaded that the implied conditions were not fulfilled, 
the breach of allegiance was justified at once. That was the 
logic of the situation, and the papacy under Gregory VII 
was the power most capable of applying it. 

It has been the fashion of historians to trace all the sub- 
sequent incidents in this great struggle to the effect of the 
_,- . , excommunication ; and there is no doubt that it 

£lI6ClS Ol 

theExcom- was forced into the foreground of events as the 
mtmication ^jj-^matic point about which the politics of the 
moment might gather. It is easy for the historian to paint 
the superstitious terrors called forth by this dreadful threat, 
and to explain everything by them ; but such effects are ex- 
tremely difficult to verify, and as one watches the really 
telling moments of the conflict, it seems to go on without 
much actual reference to emotional considerations. 

The most interesting question was, of course, how the 
decree would affect the relation of Henry to his subjects. 

„ ^^ There can be no doubt that within a very short 

upon the ^ 

Allegiance of time Henry was deserted by very many of those 
the Germans. ^|^^ ^^^ hitherto stood by him, yet in most 
cases the excommunication appears only to have given a 
pretext for a rebellion which is in character precisely the 
same as those which had kept Germany in a turmoil for a 
hundred years. It is idle to talk of loyalty to the crown at 
a time when that virtue, in the sense of a later day, was 
unknown. The question of the allegiance of a territory or 



I076J REVOLT AGAINST HENRY IV. 251 

a prince was always a question of expediency, not of senti- 
ment. Still more evident is the feeling in Lombardy. Im- 
mediately after the publication of the bull an 
om ar y. ^gg^j^^j^ qj: ^j^g Lombard clergy came together 

at Pavia, and, in so many words, declared the pope deposed 

and excommunicated ; the ancient right of any portion of 

the church to exclude another portion from its communion 

was here declared in the plainest terms. At Rome itself 

the prospect for the king was less hopeful. The 
At Rome. ^ . , .. , ^ 

Crescentian party, hostile as it was to Gregory, 

was equally disinclined towards an imperial control of the 

papacy, and, therefore, of the city. 

A second German council at Mainz, in July, 1076, added 

to the sentence of excommunication against Gregory that of 

„ , „ deposition as well, but did not offer to the king- 
Henry s Re- ^ ' » 

sources tegin the kind of support that could warrant him in 
° ^^ ' taking up arms against the pope. This seems 

to have been the fatal point in Henry's policy ; if he had 
thrown himself upon the support of the Lombards and 
summoned what was left him in Germany to follow him, 
it seems likely that he could have made, at all events, 
a very vigorous demonstration. Instead of this he gave 
the rebellion time to organize itself. The centre of 
opposition was by this time changed from Saxony to 
Swabia, and all seemed to point towards a general desertion 
of the king and the election of a new ruler. Under the 
influence of these ideas the leading princes of Germany, lay 
and clerical, came together in October at Tribur, near 
Mainz, and, while the king with his few remaining followers 
The Oppen- ^.waited the issue at Oppenheim, just across the 
heim Agree- Rhine, proceeded to a general discussion of the 
"^®^ * situation. A legate of the pope took the most 

prominent part, and one might suppose that the principles 
of the previous year were wholly forgotten. Still the 



252 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1077 

assembly hesitated to name a new king. If there was any 
principle in its action it seems to have been the same that 
had so often governed German policy, to gain all it could 
for the order of the princes while still preserving the form 
oi a monarchical government. Active negotiations were 
kept up with Henry, and a final agreement was reached 
whereby he was to be kept practically in confinement at 
Speier, and, unless he should get himself freed from the 
excommunication before the twenty-second of February 
next following, his subjects should be free to consider 
themselves absolved from their allegiance. Individual 
princes seized the opportunity to force from the king sub- 
stantial advantages for themselves. The Oppenheim agree- 
ment must be regarded as a demonstration of the German 
princes against the integrity of the kingdom itself. 

Henry, apparently following the dictation of the princes, 
retired to Speier and refrained from all public acts, but was 
_ , far from giving up the fight. The princes had, 

Escape from among other things, invited Gregory to come to 
peier. Augsburg in the early part of February, and 

there, presiding over an assembly of Germans, to settle 
once for all the questions at issue. Nothing could have 
been more agreeable to Gregory's polic)/ than such a step. 
Henry, on the other hand, desired above all things to avert 
precisely this mode of settling German affairs as establish- 
ing a precedent of the utmost danger. He opened secret 
negotiations with the pope, and even went so far as to 
promise to come personally to Rome and seek there the 
absolution demanded by the princes. This proposition 
Gregory distinctly rejected, and thus the issue takes, for 
the moment, the form of a race between the two central 
personages of the drama, which should get first into the 
territories of the other and thus prevent his opponent from 
taking the journey he had so much at heart. 



I077] CANOSSA. 253 

Just before Christmas of 1076, Henry, with his wife, their 
infant son, Conrad, and one or two servants, left Speier and 

hastened over into the friendly country of Bur- 
Tlie Journey g^j^^jy^ jjg spent Christmas at Besan^on; then, 

with a considerably increased following, set out 
on the passage of the Mont Cenis. The description of the 
journey by Lambert of Hersfeld is dramatic in the extreme. 
The winter was one of unusual severity, and the ascent of 
the pass was possible only in the face of the greatest 
dangers. It was, however, successful, and Henry found 
himself at once among friends. The Lombards, seeing in 
him their deliverer from the Pataria and its papal supporter, 
flocked to him in great numbers and called upon him to 
lead them in a direct assault upon the pope. Henry de- 
clined all these offers, declaring that his only object in 
coming to Italy was to free himself from the papal ban. 
Again this seems like a mistaken policy, but if we can take 
it as an indication that the king recognized his true source 
of power to be in Germany and nowhere else, we may 
regard it as a sign of true political wisdom. 

Meanwhile Gregory, too, had been in motion. Hardly 
had he despatched his message to Henry, refusing to hear 
Greffo ^^^ ^^ Rome, when he set out on his way north- 

Ms Way to ward. He had sent word to the German princes 
ugs urg:. ^^^^ Y^^ would be in Lombardy by such a day, 
and would await an escort from them to see'Tiim safely over 
the mountains. As far as Mantua he had the security of 
the countess Matilda's territory, but in Lombardy he was 
on dangerous ground. The escort from Germany did not 
appear, but instead came the word that Henry had escaped, 
was on his way, had already crossed the Alps, and would 
soon be face to face with the pope. Gregory was forced to 
give up his cherished plan, and withdrew into Tuscany to a 
strong castle of the countess at Canossa. 



254 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1077 

Here Henry sought him out, and at once made applica- 
tion for the absolution. Gregory was fairly caught. He 

_. „ , made a decent show of resistance, but there was 
The Proceed- ' 

ings at no conceivable ground upon which he could re- 

Canossa. £^gg ^^ absolve a sincere penitent. For three 

days, so runs the account, he kept the king waiting in his 
penitential dress in the court-yard of the castle, then ad- 
mitted him, and, in the midst of an assembly, which, in 
good mediaeval fashion, was dissolved in tears, released 
him from the ban of the church and administered to him 
the sacrament of the Eucharist. One version of the story 
adds that this administration of the communion was made 
use of as an ordeal, and that Henry failed to pass the test. 

The day at Canossa has always stood as the central point 
in the great conflict of the investiture, and, however we may 

■xfrr-i, • J look at it, it is a momentous crisis. It has 
Who gained ' 

the Day at usually been treated as the greatest of all the 
Canossa . triumphs of the papacy over the temporal powers, 
and, dramatically considered, it was so. It was the public 
demonstration that an excommunicated king could not, in 
the eleventh century, get on with his subjects, — not because 
these subjects made any superhuman demands upon the 
character of the king, but because the excommunication 
offered them an excuse, always welcome in that day, for the 
breaking of inconvenient ties. On the other hand the cir- 
cumstances of the absolution at Canossa were such as to 
take away from it much of its value to the pope. After all, 
he had been outwitted. The splendid demonstration he 
had promised himself as head of a council on German soil, 
settling the affairs of Germany from that lofty vantage- 
ground, had been denied him, and that opportunity was never 
to be regained. The king had by this clever stroke taken 
away from his subjects the pretext for rebellion and might 
now claim from them the fulfillment of their promises 



io8o] RUDOLPH OF SWABIA ANTI-KING. 255 

conditioned upon his absolution. His moderation in not 

seeking military support in Lombardy must, it would seem, 

commend him to a great patriotic party in Germany. 

So, perhaps, if there had been a patriotic party in 

Germany, it would have welcomed back its king, now that 

he had made his peace with the church, with 

Conflict in hearty enthusiasm. In fact, the best proof that 

Germany. ^^ excommunication was not the cause of 

Henry's misfortunes, is that when it was removed, not the 

slightest change in the attitude of German parties was to be 

perceived. On the contrary, the hostile elements only put 

forth renewed efforts and within a few months went so far 

as to set up a rival king. Rudolf of Swabia, carrying with 

him the lay nobles of upper Germany and the great body of 

the low-German Saxons, was elected king with the approval 

of Gregory and at once proceeded to seek the active support 

of the papacy. Gregory, however, still anxious to act the 

part of judge in German affairs, reserved his 

Swabia as decision as long as possible, but, finally, at the 

va ing. Lg^-^i-gn Synod of 1080, again declared Henry 

deposed and excommunicated, and recognized Rudolf as 

king. Another illustration of the peculiar nature of the 

papal excommunication: — it seems to have had no effect 

whatever. The party issue was so clearly defined that 

neither side could be much helped or hindered 
1080. , , , . ^ , - ^^ 

by the papal action. Indeed Henry was at this 

moment stronger than he had been before; the greater part 

of the German clergy still stood by him and it will probably 

not be far from true, if we think of him as the defender of 

the newly formed, as yet undeveloped, sense of political 

rights in the city populations of the West. 

The personal struggle, therefore, takes on the character 

of a real political conflict. From a military point of view it 

was Henry's great object to avoid a coalition of the two 



256 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1081 

ends of his kingdom and with this purpose he gathered his 

forces in the central region of Thuringia, met there the com- 

_, . ^ . bined armies of Rudolf and the Saxons, was 
Defeat and ' 

Death of thoroughly beaten by them in open fight, but 
° ' left his rival dead upon the field. The later royal 

tradition had it that Rudolf, having lost his right hand in 
the battle, declared that it was only a just retribution for 
having broken the oath which that hand had sworn. 
The hero who struck off the king's hand was said to have 
been that Godfrey of Lorraine, who was destined later to 
wear in fact, though not in name, the crown of the Latin 
kingdom of Jerusalem. 

There were those who saw in the death of Rudolf a judg- 
ment of God, but even mediaeval ideas could not obscure 
the fact that the victory had remained on his 

Hermann of gide, and the party which had lost him as a leader 

Luxemburg: . -^ 

as Rival soon determined to try its fortune with another. 

?i^^' « They united upon Hermann, count of Luxem- 

108I-1088. •' ^ ... 

burg, who for seven years maintained himself 

with considerable success, but without leaving any strong 

impress upon the politics of his day. We need concern 

ourselves no further with his fortunes. Our only interest is 

to notice that his party stood for a new idea of the relation 

of Germany to the papacy, which was as yet far from being 

universally accepted. 

The effort to maintain a German kingdom on the basis of 

the Gregorian programme had called out all there was of 

^, ,. ^ German resistance. A synod at Bambersr, an- 
Election of -^ . . 

an Anti-pope, other at Mainz, attended by a majority of the 
1080. German episcopate, had declared Gregory de- 

posed from the chair of Peter and called upri the clergy of 
Germany and Italy to unite in choosing a proper person in 
his place. At Brixen in Tyrol a great assembly of German 
and Lombard bishops renewed the sentence of deposition 



io84] ANTI-POPE AND ANTI-KING. 257 

and elected Wibert of Ravenna, a man who for years had 
been the chief representative of the imperial cause in Italy, 
as rival pope. The answer to schism in the empire was 
schism in the papacy. The electoral system had plainly its 
inconveniences as well as its advantages for both institutions. 
In spite of efforts to fix the electoral process in both cases, 
it was clear that on this point there was still hopeless con- 
fusion. The cardinal college plays no part whatever in the 
matter. Nor do we as yet discern anything like a college of 
electors in Germany; it was such crises as this that were 
slowly educating both empire and papacy up to constitutional 
ideas of government. 

The elevation of an anti-pope carried with it the duty of 
seeing him safely into his chair, and Henry, immediately 

after the death of Rudolf, found himself in con- 
Henry m 

Italy. dition to attempt the role of his father. As he 

^^^^' crossed the Alps for the second time, his follow- 

ing, though small, was faithful, and his reception by the 
Lombards was again enthusiastic. Ravenna received him 
with open arms. Tuscany, where the city element was 
already showing itself hostile to the "great countess," made 
no resistance and Henry found himself at the gates of 
Rome, in full expectation that he would be received there 
also as a deliverer from the tyranny of a pope who had 
never yet fully identified himself with the interests of the 
city. These hopes were bitterly disappointed ; the Gregorian 
party was for the moment strong enough to refuse the 
demand of Henry, based upon his descent, that he should 
be admitted and crowned as his predecessors had been. 

It was to be three years yet before the imperial crown 
should be won, three years of incessant scheming on both 
sides, during which the great resources of the greatest of 
popes were displayed to their very utmost. In this interval 
we find Gregory in an unbroken series of negotiations, with 



258 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1084 

the Normans, with the Greek empire, with the German princes 
supporting Hermann of Luxemburg, with France and Eng- 
land and the countries along; the eastern frontier 
The Strugfgle n . • . 

for Rome of Germany; all this restless activity centering in 

and the ^hg one purpose of keeping Henry out of Rome, 

Empire. 

and of presentmg the papacy to the world as 

the one central directing force of western Christianity. 

On the other side, the energy of Henry IV had never 

been so effectively displayed. During these three years he 

„ , never left Italy; now in Lombardy, keeping up 

Capture of the courage of the anti-papal party, now in 

°™^* Ravenna, securing to himself the allegiance of 

the petty princes and cities that had fallen away from the 

papal allegiance, now in Tuscany, sustaining the growing 

independence of the cities, aiding unconsciously in all these 

cases the development of a power that was to be the most 

deadly opponent of the imperial claim in Italy. At last, in 

the spring of 1084, the citizens of Rome were tired enough 

of the situation to desire at least a change, and through 

their connivance Henry was admitted into the city. Wibert 

the anti-pope was with him, and a repetition of the events of 

1046 seemed to take place. The new pope was recognized 

by the Romans and for his first act crowned the king and 

queen with the imperial insignia, which for nearly thirty 

years had been without a bearer, 

Gregory was driven into the castle of St. Angelo, and was 

able to hold the place until the help from the Normans, on 

which he had counted, should arrive. Robert 
The Normans ^ . , , - ^ • ^ ^ ^^• 

capture and Guiscard, at the moment occupied with ambitious 

plunder schemes in southern Greece, hurried back into 

Italy and at the head of a large mixed force, 

lured to his banner by the delightful prospect of plundering 

the holy city, appeared before the southern gates of Rome. 

Henry, meanwhile, not equal to this new danger, had set 



10S5] DEATH OF GREGORY VIE 259 

out for Germany, leaving the anti-pope, Clement III, strongly 
placed at Tivoli. The Norman deliverers got themselves 
into the city by treachery, and at once showed the true 
character of their deliverance. Not to Rome, but to the 
papacy of Gregory, had they sworn allegiance ; Rome had 
rebelled against their lord and should suffer for it. For 
days the city was given up to such a wholesale carnival of 
violence as it had not seen since the times of the Ostrogoths. 
Whatever of loyalty to Gregory was left at Rome was scat- 
tered by these events, and his only hope was in the devotion 
of his Normans. With them he left the city of his ambitions 
and wandered into an exile, that was destined, happily, not 
to be of long duration. 

Gregory, in exile at Salerno, seemed to have lost nothing 
of his former energy. The message which he sent out by 

■r. ^^ ^ legates to all the princes of Christendom was 

Death of ^ J^ 

Gregory VII not one whit less defiant or less self-confident in 
at sa erno. ^^^ tone than the documents of his earliest years. 
He summoned the faithful by every argument at his command 
to gather an army and come to the relief of their suffering 
head. The whole spirit of the crusades is in this last 
trumpet call of a great leader who feels his strength slipping 
away, but knows that he is leaving behind him a cause 
greater than himself, and wishes to hand it on, unstained by 
one shadow of a doubt, to a generation that shall be more 
fortunate than his own. The consciousness of approaching 
death was strong upon Gregory, and from all sides the 
leaders of his party came flocking about him seeking his 
advice for the crisis they all expected. Gregory seems to 
have made no specific nomination for the succession ; he 
died on the fifteenth of May, 1085. "I have loved justice 
and hated iniquity, therefore I die in exile," were the last 
words of the greatest man of his time, one of the greatest of 
all time. 



260 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1088 

Within a few months of the death of Gregory, died, also, 

Robert Guiscard, the actual founder of a great kingdom, 

_ ^, . whose ambition, however, could not rest satisfied 

Death of ' ' 

RcfcertGuis- within the limits of his own foundation, but 
car . 108 . (^reanied of conquest in those far-oif eastern 
lands about which the glamour of the crusading period was 
already gathering. The disappointment of these ambitions^ 
and the death of Robert in the midst of them, were probably 
the most fortunate results possible for the real development 
of the Norman kingdom. Its history for a hundred years 
from this time is one of a steady progress, in many ways simi- 
lar to that which under such very different conditions was 
going on under the first Norman kings of England. The 
wonder is that with so favorable a beginning the future of 
the Italian peninsula was not more distinctly influenced "by its 
largest and most compact territorial sovereignty. Italian unity 
was to come, not from the south, but from the farthest north. 
We continue to follow the thread of the investiture 
quarrel as giving us the best clue to the larger politics of 

^ , ^ Europe. For twenty years after the death of 

Development ^ -' -^ 

of Parties in Gregory, Henry IV continued to hold his own 
Germany. against a series of adverse factions which, one 
after another, took shape against him. We may properly 
think of the king as representing a set of ideas as to the 
nature of the German kingdom, which had come down from 
the days of the Ottos, but which were opposed to the new 
condition of things brought into being by the growth of the 
feudal relation and its extension into the affairs of the 
church. If we look through the mist of personal motives, 
dynastic ambitions and religious hostilities, that enwraps the 
movement of events in this interval, we shall be able to dis- 
cern certain radical changes which were coming over German 
political life. Roughly speaking, we may say that the king 
was usually in alliance with the majority of the higher clergy 



io88] PARTIES IN GERMANY. 1(A 

and with the rising city elements of the Rhine and Danube 
countries, while his opponents were generally the lay nobility, 
especially in upper Germany, these in turn seeking alliance 
with the great clerical reform movement, and joining hands 
with the vast agricultural population of lower Germany or 
Saxony. 

It would not, probably, be far out of the way if we think 
of the king as standing for the idea of the " Landfrieden," 

or "the king's peace,"' that is, the administration 
"Land- o x 7 

frieden"an(i o^ ^^e government on the basis of a strong 
"Gottes- central power, insisting upon obedience to the 

law and capable of enforcing it ; while the parties 
opposing him represent the idea of the "Gottesfrieden," 
that is, the maintenance of order by means of an agreement 
among equal powers based upon religious motives. At all 
events, this is an extremely instructive point of view, and 
helps us to see some meaning in the apparently petty squab- 
bling with which the latter years of Henry IV are filled. 

Down to 1088 it is Hermann of Luxemburg about whom 
the malcontents rally, but this is plainly a royalty with no 

heart in it. The death of Hermann obliged 
The Sticces- 1 i • 

sion of Par- these hostile elements to cast about for another 

ties against figure-head. At almost the same moment died 
Henry. 

Pope Victor III, the successor of Gregory, who 

had never been able to oust Henry's pope, Clement III, 
from his position in Rome. The Gregorian party now put 
forward their strongest man, the bishop of Ostia, a French 
monk of Cluny, who, under the name of Urban II, the pope 
of the first crusade, was to lead in the triumphant vindica- 
tion of the Hildebrandine policy. One of his earliest moves 
was to bring about a marriage between the great countess, 
now a woman of forty, and the seventeen-year old prince, 
Welf (Guelf) of Bavaria, whose house had long been a 
centre of opposition to Henry in Germany. The king's 



262 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1095 

answer to this was another expedition into Italy, which 

nearly succeeded in breaking the combination and securing 

the lands of Matilda to the empire, — nearly, but not quite ; 

in the midst of success the situation was suddenly changed 

by a new demonstration of the monastic reforming party. 

Lombardy, which until now had stood by the empire, was 

completely carried away by this fresh enthusiasm. A group 

of Lombard cities, headed by Milan, formed a league for 

twenty years against Henry, and, hardest blow of all, his son 

Conrad, whose education had been chiefly in Lombardy, 

joined himself definitely to the papal party. 

Not until the sixth year after his election did Urban II 

gain an entrance into the Lateran, while the party of the 

imperialist pope still maintained itself in Traste- 
Tlrban n as _ , . , , ^ ^ . , 

tte Leader vere. Early m 1095 he leit Kome agam on that 

of Romanic memorable journey to France, by which the 

Christianity. •^- r .i ^i • r 

position of the papacy as the moving power of 

western Christendom was to be displayed as never before. 
His first demonstration was at Piacenza, where, in the great 
plain which was to be the scene of so many similar gather- 
ings, he found himself surrounded by all the strongest 
elements of the empire. He once more excommunicated 
the emperor, and here, for the first time, called upon the 
nations of the West to rally in support of the hard-pressed 
empire of the East. At Cremona, the young Conrad, already 
crowned king of Italy by the bishop of Milan, held the stir- 
rup of the pope and bound himself by an oath, similar to 
that of Robert Guiscard. The pope promised him the im- 
perial crown at Rome, reserving, in strictest form, the claim 
of the papacy to the episcopal investiture. A marriage 
between Conrad and an infant daughter of the Norman 
count, Roger of Sicily, seemed to place at the service of the 
papacy such a combination as it had never been able to 
command before. At Milan the archbishop did penance for 



I095] PAPAL TRIUMPH.— FIRST CRUSADE. 263 

having received his investiture from the emperor, and then, 
in company with the pope, celebrated with the greatest pomp 
the elevation of the demagogue Erlembald, the fiery leader 
of the early Pataria, into the ranks of the martyrs. For the 
first time in history the Ambrosian church was completely 
under the influence of the Roman policy. At this moment 
all the resources of Italy, from the remotest south to the 
Alpine valleys of the north, were at the disposal of a papacy, 
which seemed great enough to gather them up into one vast 
undertaking. 

From Lombardy the papal triumph passed over into Bur- 
gundy and France. All up the Rhone valley, without a 

^^ ^ ., protest from the lord of the land in his retreat in 
The Council ^ 

at Clermont. Tyrol, the pope appears, granting privileges, 
^^' * settling disputes, dedicating churches, as if there 

were no sovereign of Burgundy but himself. At Clermont, 
in Auvergne, he found himself again in the midst of an en- 
thusiastic throng from all the lands of southern Europe ; for, 
though this was proclaimed as a general council, there was 
practically no representation from Germany or from England. 
The earliest business of the council, sitting on French soil, 
the attendance of the French clergy being authorized by the 
king, was to excommunicate that king for his private sins, 
without, however, declaring his subjects released from their 
allegiance. The three great principles of the Cluny reform, 
the canonicity, the chastity and the " liberty " of the clergy, 
were once more proclaimed in their full scope and their 
absolute imperativeness. The opposition of the French 
clergy to the Cluny attack seemed totally overcome-. 

Finally, it was to an audience already wrought up to the 
highest pitch of religious fervor that this pope of Cluny 
made his appeal for the dedication of the arms of western 
Christendom, no longer to the selfish aims of personal or 
partisan warfare., but to the redemption of the holy soil of 



264 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1095 

Jerusalem from the pollution of the infidel. It has been 

the service of recent historians to point out the practical 

economic, military, social and personal motives 
The Procla- . . ^. ■' . . , . 

mation of o^ the crusaduig spirit ; but if we have followed 

the First carefully the sjrowth of religious sentiment from 
Crusade. . 

the beginnings of the Cluny reform, it will be 

clear that the very ideality of this demand, its freedom, 
for the moment, from every admixture of practical consider- 
ations was precisely the element in it which called forth the 
unanimous and almost frantic enthusiasm of that great 
assembly. It was not the charm of adventure in the 
romantic regions of the Orient, nor the hope of plunder, 
nor the superstitious terrors of the church, that drove men 
to renounce their mutual strife and enroll themselves under 
the banner of the cross ; this was one of those moments, 
not so infrequent as some historians would have us believe, 
when a great ideal, representing some precious thing to 
men, seizes upon them and sweeps them away beyond the 
reach of all practical considerations, out into an unknown 
world of aspiration and of hope. The cry of the fighting- 
men at Clermont, " It is the will of God," represents, we 
may be sure, with entire accuracy, the dominant motive of 
the early crusading period. 

The reaction of this religious impulse upon the fortunes 
of the emperor was less disastrous than might have been 
expected. The crusading impulse affected 
lion against mainly the Romanic peoples of Europe. For 
Henry rv. ^^ present, the Germanic countries were hardly, 
touched by it. If we think of Clermont as marking the 
definite loss of that control over the papacy which had 
been the most striking feature of the empire of the Ottos 
and of Henry III, we may also date from this time a new 
epoch of internal development for Germany. The energy 
of the papacy was for the moment wholly devoted to the 



iioo-iro6] LAST CONFLICT OF LIENRY IV. 265 

crusade ; the Italian kingdom of Conrad proved to be a 
sham affair, held together by no permanent ties, while the 
German nobility, never extravagantly papal in its feelings, 
turned for a while, with something of its ancient attachment, 
to its thoroughly German emperor. The years from 1095 
to 1 1 04 were the most peaceful of Henry's troublous rei^n. 
In 1098 the German princes definitely excluded prince 
Conrad from the royal succession, and a year later crowned 
the second son, Henry, as their king and future emperor. 
At the death of his pope, Clement III, in 11 00, Henry 
made no attempt to continue the opposition to the Gre- 
gorian party, and seems to have intended seriously to go 
once more to Rome and there seek a definite settlement of 
the still pending difficulties between empire and papacy. 
Meanwhile a new rebellion, the last, was preparing. If 
Henry IV was the champion of the great artisan and 
peasant elements of his kingdom, Henry V began, during 
his father's lifetime, to ally himself with the class of the 
lay nobility, and to foster their opposition to the more 
popular policy of the emperor. If we may believe the 
author of the Vita Henrici, the issue was still between the 
idea of a government that should be strong enough to be 
the champion of the oppressed everywhere and the sense 
of independence among the great class of the free nobles, 
whose only idea of a government was that of an agreement 
among themselves, sanctioned by a religious bond. 

On some such issue as this Henry IV fought his last 
fight ; at first with some success, in the region of Cologne 

and Liege, where he had ever found his best 
Deposition . 

and Death support. Finally, as if worn out with the long 

1106^^"^' ^^^^Sgl^j he gave up his crown to his son and 

withdrew himself from further action. His 

friends kept up the contest a little longer, but his death at 

Liege in 11 06 scattered the last remnants of opposition to 



266 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [1106 

the young king, who entered upon his reign encumbered by- 
allies whose usefulness to him ceased when he in turn took 
up the line of the imperial claims. From this time on, 
until the break-up of the mediaeval empire, after the down- 
fall of the Hohenstaufens, whenever an emperor had got 
his power through a papal alliance, he invariably found this 
alliance impossible the moment he undertook to govern. It 
was the best proof that these two institutions represented 
ideals that were irreconcilable. If our impression of 
Henry IV has been the true one, we may explain the usual 
historical misrepresentation of him quite easily. The classes 
of society whose interests he defended had no organs of 
expression, while those which he attacked had command of 
all the resources of literature, and have made the record 
for all time. The fate of Henry was that of every one who, 
in an age of purely clerical learning, dared to oppose him- 
self to the organized church. 

The rebellion and the accession of Henry V had taken 
place under the direct inspiration of the Gregorian papacy, 

now in the hands of Paschal II. The immense 
Henry V as 

Gregorian success of the first crusade had given to the 
Emperor. papacy a prestige hitherto unequalled. It 'might 
with reason think of itself as the centre of western Christen- 
dom, and hope for even greater triumphs. The renewal of 
the prohibition against the lay-investiture by Pascal in 1106 
was a public declaration that the Gregorian policy was not 
to suffer at his hands. In every country but Germany this 
branch of the reform had gone on to almost complete suc- 
cess, and Pascal might well expect from a German king who 
owed everything to him, a prompt recognition of his claim. 
Directly the contrary took place. Henry V found himself 
thrown, in almost every particular, upon the same elements 
of his kingdom that had supported his father. He put 
himself at once into intimate relations with the great city 



I no] HENRY V FOR AND AGAINST THE PAPACY. 267 

communities of the West, which, like their brethren of 
northern Italy and France, were beginning to feel the 
breath of a new political life. 

Furthermore, Henry was able, as his father never had 
been, to control the masses of fighting-men, created by the 
feudal development and ready to fall in with any 
inA*^s military undertaking that gave an outlet to 

against tie their warlike ardor. Elsewhere this outlet had 
been furnished by the crusades ; here it came in 
the form of a grand Italian expedition of the good old sort. 
Henry's summons in the year mo was answered by a force 
of thirty thousand men, which, passing over the Alps in two 
columns, carried all before it. The Lombard communes 
sent in their allegiance and contributions. Novara, resist- 
ing, was destroyed. One feels here in advance the temper 
of the Hohenstaufen era. The " great countess " submitted 
and offered troops, which were refused. From Sutri, on the 
Roman border, Henry began negotiations, at first, as his 
father had done, secretly, over the heads of his own subjects, 
eager, as Henry IV had been, to make a combination with 
the pope that should insure him against all rivalry at home. 

We have the terms of this secret compact,^ and very 
remarkable they are. They contain nothing less than an 

absolute promise by the papacy that the clerical 
The Secret . j. j. ^ 

Agreement princes of the empire should henceforth abandon 
of February ^n temporal possessions which they had received 

from the empire since the days of Charlemagne, 
and should content themselves with their income from tithes 
and the gifts of pious persons. In return for this surrender, 
the king should abandon all claim to the investiture, and 
should guarantee to the papacy the full enjoyment of all its 
possessions and rights. This compact was then publicly 
proclaimed at the coronation of the emperor on the 12th. 

1 Mathews' Select Documents, pp. 61-68. 



268 THE CONFLICT OF THE INVESTITURE. [im 

It will be seen that it went to the very root of the matters 
in dispute. If the clerical princes were to lose their tem- 
poral possessions and functions, and confine themselves 
strictly to their spiritual office, then there was indeed nothing 
left to quarrel about. They ceased then to be princes, and 
there was no reason whatever why the king should not be 
willing that they should get their consecration where they 
pleased. The pope, too, might well be content with an agree- 
ment which cost him nothing, which secured him in the enjoy- 
ment of the papal property, and gave him an indefinite pros- 
pect of control over the vast spiritual army of the empire. 

The weak point in the compact was that it sacrificed a 
class little inclined to let itself be sacrificed. The clergy of 

Italy had already suffered so much in precisely 
The Agree- ^ . ^ / . . . , f ^ 

ment of this way from the growmg cities, that they were 

April II, little concerned, but the German bishops and 
nil. . . . 

abbots had no idea of giving up the princely 

character which had cost them so many generations of 
struggle. They protested that this agreement, entered into 
without consulting them, was nothing less than heretical, 
and the king was forced to give way. He pressed the ad- 
vantage of his position, however, to force the pope into a 
second compact, by which the full right of investiture was 
surrendered to the empire. This seemed like a complete 
imperial triumph, but the immediate result was to revive the 
antagonisms of the previous reign. The German princes, 
lay and clerical, wanted then as they had before and have 
done ever since, a leader who should not govern, but should 
get on as he might, leaving them to enjoy an ever increasing 
independence. A rebellion, finding its support in precisely 
the same elements of the territorial nobility which had 
fought Henry IV, was formed against his son, and he in 
turn continued to find his support in the great industrial 
population of the Rhine valley. 






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CONCORDAT OF WORMS, 1122, 



,'*' J* 



- . COXCORDA T OF WORMS., ; 

>.i)e b) one the great lay princes fell away from the king, 
and more and more he sought to strengthen himself in Italy. 

•r,. ■■ « ^^, At the death of the countess Matilda he sue- 
Final Settle- 
ment of the ceeded, with the help of his Lombard allies, in 
Investiture, g^xivci^ hold of her territory ; at Rome he set up 
an anti-pope against the successor of Paschal and returned to 
Germany, prepared to settle, once for all, the whole question 
of the investiture. The pope, Calixtus II, though a lis 
gundian and a friend of Cluny, was, 'on his side, ready to 
make concessions. The plan this time, though less thorough- 
going than before, was based on a similar distinction between 
the clerical and the political functions of the clergy. It did 
not call upon them to resign their civil position as princes 
of the realm, but it asked them to admit the feudal rights of 
the king, while, at the same time, it permitted them to base 
their spiritual office on the papal sanction. At a Diet at 
Worms in 1122, in the presence of a great representation or 
the German princes, the emperor declared his willingness to 
give up the investiture ''with the ring and the staff," that 
with the spiritual functions, provided that the election shoi 
take place in his presence or that of his agents, and that 
should invest with the sceptre, that is with the imperial rights. 
This was, so far as formal agreements could end it, the 
end of the great conflict which for more than half a centiu v 

had been the chief political interest of tue c 
cordatof pire. It was a compromise on both sides. T'l" 

Worms. essential character of the churchman as a feudal 

1122. 

prince was not touched by it, and in the future 

as in the past, the relation of this class to the imperial 

government was often a matter of great uncertainty. The 

difference was that now the concordat furnished a legal basis 

for the decision of any given case, and unquestionably both 

the leading powers were convinced that their interest lay in 

avoiding, as far as possible, any open rent '^^ of a conni-^- 

tlia^ had cost tljr^.- ^ such terrible sacrii 



rx. 



THE Hi 



Y IN GERMANY 



WlBALDI 1 


/ Hat, } alie, 


Letters of .. 


,,•■1 -..''ur,' vv'- 


Konrad III aad ' 




DTTO Frisin* 


,0 i\AO/ 


/ imperator. 


C- -,1 . 


H\ 1867. T, 




Roman timc> 


i.ciiin and a 


Otto is our '■ 


., f.^. r-r^^ . - 


V'.ISERCH!*)N • 




'ral(?) work '. 


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iiRONICA Rt 


•-•■Tfr.^iSiS. 1^^ 


A compreliei; 




i.iesigned es}>t .. 


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ilie Italian s"^ ■/. 


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xviii, xix. 




yxviii. 




vFFK, } 




Sachsen. 




Raumer, 1 . 


' \ 


6 vols. iS: 




Balza?.'t, Uc 




of Ch. His- ■ 





reruru Gertnanicanim 
the minister of Loth;\ 

'GENS IS. Gesta Fride* 
:o Otto Fris., 6*/' ^ " 
c historical writi; 
on of philosophic grt. - 

; r 849-54. The first hist • 
legendary matter and U' 
.: iiji Hohenstaufen period, 
G! r^ii, xxii, xxiv, and 8", iJ ■ • 
i^, written at Cologne, r 
ui :■ of imperial history. 
for. period are collected in M 
'he English in M. G. x. ■ 



■ . '1- • ler Lot?! r 
•enstaufen und ihr- 
ihenstaufen, 1889, [Ef 



1 125] THE SITUATION IN 1125. 271 

Castro, G. de. Arnaldo da Brescia e la rivolutione romana del XII. 

secolo. 1870. 
Delarc, O. Les Normands en Italie depuis les premieres invasions 

jusqu'a I'an 1073. 1883. 
Johnson, A. H. The Normans in Europe. 4th ed. 1886. 
Bernhardt, W. Jahrbiicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Konrad III. 

1883. 
Prutz, H. Kaiser Friedrich I to 1177. 2 vols. 1871. 
VoiGT, J. Geschichte des Lombardenbundes. 18 18. 
Tost I, L. Storia della Lega Lombarda. 1848. 
ViGNATi, C. Storia diplomatica della Lega Lombarda. 1866. 
Handloike, M. Die Lombardischen Stadte und die Entstehung der 

Communen. 1883. 
Hegel, Karl. Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien. 1847. 

Also Stadte und Gilden der Germanischen Volker im Mittelalter. 

2 vols. 1891. 

Heinemann, O. Albrecht der Bar. 1864. 

Philippson, M. Geschichte Heinrichs des Lovi^en. 2 vols. 1867. 

Reuter, H. Geschichte Alexanders III und der Kirche seiner Zeit. 

3 vols. 1860-64. 

Tuttle, H. History of Prussia. Vols, i-iii. 1884-1888. 
CoxE, Wm. History of the House of Austria. 1820. 
Kaemmel, Otto. Die Anfange Deutschen Lebens in Oesterreich. 
1879. 

The Concordat at Worms marks the definite ending of 

the first stage in the great conflict of Church and State, 

which is the main interest of our narrative. 
Transition _ . . , . . , ..^ 

from the Durmg that stage the empire, nrst under Henry 

Former jy ^nd then under Henry V, had stood as 

Period. .... 

the only effectual barrier against claims which 

implied the utter subjection of all temporal powers under 

the dictation of the Roman clerical system. At one moment 

it had seemed possible that the knot might be cut by giving 

up all those contradictions in both empire and papacy which 

lay at the very root of the difficulty. The agreements of 

mi had suggested a possible separation, once for all, 

of the temporal and spiritual ; Caesar should have his own, 



272 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1125 

and God, — that is to say, the church, — should have his own 
and no more. The complete and immediate failure of this 
scheme shows how entirely it ignored the actual situation. 
The close interweaving of spiritual and temporal motives 
was, for good or ill, an essential feature of msdiaeval life, 
and the great political problem must be worked out on that 
line, if at all. The Concordat of Worms was the formal 
declaration of this fact. The clergyman was recognized as 
a dual personality, owing the sanction for one side of his 
activity to the temporal, and for the other to the spiritual 
authority. 

As we enter upon the next stage of European politics, 
it is important to notice the situation of parties again. 

Indeed, it has already been outlined ; the con- 
"GMbeliin^" ^^^^ of the royal with the territorial powers in 

Germany and Italy, which had taken definite 
shape under Henry V, becomes permanent, but assumes 
new and ever varying forms. In the main, it may be 
described by the terms "Guelf" and " Ghibelline," ^ the 
former denoting, in Germany, that opposition to the Hohen- 
staufen policy which gathered about the princes of the 
House of Guelf, the latter, the allegiance to an idea of the 
kingdom which was the continuation of the Salian idea, adapt- 
ing itself to a changed order of things. In Italy the term 
" Guelf " came to mean the interest of the papacy, but also 
and with equal significance, the interest of the new indus- 
trial civilization of the cities, while " Ghibelline " became 
the party name for the Italian imperialists, and also for that 
great class of inherited interests which found their best 
support in the imperial idea as against both papacy and 
democracy. 

1 The derivation of Ghibelline is uncertain. The story of the use of 
" Waiblingen " as a Hohenstaufen battle-cry has no foundation in con- 
temporary records. 



1000-1250] CHANGES IN GERMAN TERRITORIES. 273 

The map of Central Europe at the year 1000, and at the 

close of the Hohenstaufen period, is the best illustration of 

the movement of politics in that interval. At the 

Territorial former date, the political units are great tradi- 
Development . , . , , „ t-. • a n 

in Germany, tional territorial masses, baxony, Eavaria, AUe- 

mania, Franconia and Lorraine, each with a 
sense of almost national unity and led, in its political move- 
ments, by a jealous and ambitious local nobility. At the 
latter, these great masses are broken up into a multitude of 
petty holdings, in the hands of newly created aristocracy, 
no less jealous of its rights and far more skillful in enforcing 
them. This vast development has come about mainly 
through the advance of the feudal idea, and has gone on, 
step by step, profiting by every necessity of the monarchy, 
to wrest from it some new privilege. This necessity was; in 
Germany as everywhere else, most often the lack of money 
for carrying on those great undertakings, especially in Italy, 
for which the monarchy had no resources of its own. 

Still more striking is the change of the eastern frontier. 

At the year 1000 we find Germany bounded by the rivers 

Elbe and Saale, and by the line of Marks, 

Advance of extending southward from the western line of 

the Eastern 

Frontier. ^^e Bohemian forest, crossing the Danube at the 

river Enns, and reaching on to the head waters 

of the Adriatic. Beyond this line is the great mass of 

Slavonic and Hungarian (Magyar) population, more or less 

influenced by its German neighbors, but not as yet definitely 

incorporated with them. By 1250 we find the German 

frontier advanced so as to cover the valley of the Oder and 

the Upper Elbe, and to cross the Danube well below Vienna. 

The "land below the Enns" has become incorporated into the 

duchy of Austria, which is soon to extend its hand over 

all Bohemia at the north, and over Styria, Carinthia, and 

Carniola on the south. At the far north again, along 



274 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1125 

the shore of the Baltic, the German line has advanced far 
beyond the Vistula, giving place for the development of a 
pure Germanic culture on the lands of the heathen 
Prussians. 

All this is an indication of an immense expansion of Ger- 
man life, and it will be our purpose to follow, if we can, the 

connection of this industrial and popular develop- 
TheHohen- - ^ ^ ^ . ^ 

staufen ment with the larger movement of German 

Policy in politics. As regards the connection with Italy, 

we have to trace there the working out of 

political and social forces, of which we have already noted 

the beginnings. The spirit of communal independence 

throughout Italy, but especially in Lombardy, had begun 

already to influence the policy of Conrad II. It was over- 

sha'dowed by the great success of Henry III, whose own 

resources were sufficient for his purposes. It had offered 

its services to Henry IV, but with the progress of the great 

conflict it had been captured by the ascetic reforming 

party, and had thrown its weight against the empire. It 

had raised the young Conrad to power, but deserted him 

when it had no further use for him and now, in the Hohen- 

staufen time, it was to develop into a vast combination, 

able to hold the balance between papacy and empire, and, 

while playing a bold and successful political part, to give 

an impulse to Italian civilization that was never to be 

lost. The problem of the Hohenstaufen kings was to 

assert, over against this communal spirit, the right of the 

empire as such, and to enforce this right, not merely with 

the sword, after the fashion of the Ottos and the Henrys, 

but also with every weapon of legal argument which the 

new interest in the study of the Roman Law could furnish 

them. 

The Hohenstaufen period begins with the election of 

Lpthair of Saxony. Henry V died childless, but his two 



1 125] THE GUELF PARTY UNDER LOTHAIR. 275 

nephews, Conrad and Frederic of Hohenstaufen, who had 

been his chief supporters, were looked upon as the natural 

heirs of his policy, and, unquestionably, lioped 
Election of . , , . „ . . • r 

Lothairof ^o^ ^^e election. Once more representatives of 

Saxony. the ancient stems came together to discuss the 

II25. . . , , ,. . T 

situation, and the process was distinctly an 

advance upon previous occasions. A committee of ten 
from each of the four leading stems was selected to make 
nominations, and presented the names of Lothair of Supplin- 
burg, duke of Saxony, Leopold, duke of Austria, and Fred- 
eric, duke of Swabia. With the full understanding that he 
was the choice of the Roman party, the princes, with the 
exception of the Hohenstaufen, gave their voices for 
Lothair. 

At the moment of his consecration Lothair was called 
upon to pay the price of his clerical support. He was in- 
duced to make a compact with the papacy by 
and the which he gave up that clause of the Concordat 

ves 1 ure. ^£ ^^22 which required the emperor's presence 
at episcopal elections, and agreed to invest any person who 
could prove that he had been canonically elected. In the 
vacant bishopric of Magdeburg he permitted the appoint- 
ment of Norbert, founder of the order of Premontre', the 
German Cluny, a man utterly devoted to the interest of 
Rome. 

The Swabian brothers had set up the astonishing theory 
that as heirs of Henry V they were entitled, not only to his 
Claims of Private property, but also to those lands which 
the Hohen- during his reign had been acquired for the em- 
pire. This would have given them for their own 
the whole of the countess Matilda's possession's, the city and 
fortress of Nuremberg and numerous other valuable hold- 
ings. The mere statement of such a preposterous claim 
shows the incredible uncertainty as to political right that 



276 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1125 

prevailed in the feudal period. Every kind of power took 
on a personal aspect. It was easy to say that the empire 
had acquired a territory ; but where was the empire ? When 
the emperor died, what became of the rights which he had 
held in his hands ? There was no permanent machinery of 
administration, such as we think of as essential to the exist- 
ence of a state. There were frequently long intervals in 
which the imperial title lay in abeyance. The very idea of 
an imperial possession was obscure. Matilda had become 
a vassal of the emperor ; did that mean of the empire ? If 
so, where was the person to whom her lands should offer 
their service ? 

A diet called before the end of 1125 sustained the king in 
his contention that the lands in question belonged to him as 

successor of Henry V, declared the Hohen- 
The Hohen- " . i i 1 1 1 , , 

staufen staurens traitors and placed them under the ban 

Claims de- of the empire. As the most effective counter- 
feated. , 

stroke to their schemes, Lothair married his 

daughter Gertrude to Henry the Proud, duke of Bavaria, the 

first in that series of Guelf Henrys who for three generations 

headed at every point the opposition to. the Hohenstaufen 

policy. The mother of this Henry was a Billing, and 

through her he inherited as " allode " vast territories in 

Saxony, notably the Brunswick lands, which later came to be 

the basis of that kingdom of Hanover through which the 

Guelf family came to the throne of England. In addition to 

this allode he received from his father-in-law all the fiefs in 

Saxony which Lothair had formerly held of the church. 

This was the foundation of the Guelf power in the north, 

which w^as to be the chief agent in the eastward expansion 

of German civilization. The very nature of his property 

made the Guelf the natural enemy of the Hohenstaufen and 

cast him, therefore, as a matter of course, into the papal 

camp. 



1 133] LOTHAIR IN THE PAPAL INTEREST. 277 

> The Hohenstaufen carried their resistance to the point of 

setting up Conrad as rival king, getting him crowned in 

Italy and making a vi2;orous . demonstration in 
Lothair's ^ . 

Treaty with Tuscany, but on the whole failed, Lothair was 
Innocent IL carried along by his papal-Guelf combination 
over every obstacle to his coronation by Pope Innocent II 
in 1 133. Already his concessions about the investiture had 
become inconvenient. The year before he had demanded 
the restoration of his rights, but had been persuaded to 
yield. Again, in Rome, the subject came up and a slight 
gain for the emperor was made. Henceforth no bishop 
should have the ^'- regalia^' ^ until the king should have in- 
vested him and received from him "what was his due." As 
to Tuscany: Lothair might take possession of it on the pay- 
ment of a yearly sum of one hundred pounds of silver to 
Rome, — but this was only for his life ; after his death it 
should revert to the papacy and should then be given in fief 
to Henry and Gertrude ; upon their death it was to come 
again to the papacy. 

These are most interesting negotiations, as showing the 
peculiar ideas of territorial lordship bred by the feudal 
End of the system. Our interest in them is chiefly to 
Hohenstaufen notice their effect on the parties of the future, 
esis ance. 'Y\vQ. Guelf possessions were now the largest 
in the hands of any single ruler on the continent. Tuscany, 
Bavaria and Saxony were a royal equipment. Against 
this pressure the Hohenstaufen resistance gave way, and 
in the year 1135 both the Swabian princes sent in their 
allegiance to Lothair. They were left in possession of the 
Salian (Franconian) family inheritance and became the 
faithful supporters of the imperial policy. The final demon- 
stration of the Guelf kingdom was made the following year 

i-The word " regalia " means here the right of the bishop to perform 
those functions which belonged to him as a temporal lord. 



278 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1136 

against King Roger of Sicily, whose very fresh royalty was 
the creation of the anti-pope Anacletus, while the German 
power had steadily supported Innocent II, the pope of the 
Cistercians. The expedition was treated as a sort of 
crusade, for this Roger, a man of vast energy and resource, 
had followed the example of the English Normans in making 
his kingdom a real kingdom, and had not scrupled to employ 
the arms of Saracen as well as Christian subjects in enforc- 
ing the obedience of unwilling vassals. His power extended 
over the whole of lower Italy and was a continual threat to 
the papacy, as well as to the principalities of the centre and 
the north. 

Lothair, bravely supported by Henry the Proud, with 
Conrad of Hohenstaufen for his standard-bearer, and fol- 
lowed willingly by a very large German con- 
Conquest of , . , . -11. ' r 1 • • 

Apulia by tmgent, round it possible to raise from the cities 
Lothair. of Lombardy money enough to carry him through, 

and passed along the eastern slope of the Apen- 
nines as far as Bari, without resistance. Thence, aided by 
the fleets of Genoa and Pisa he crossed to Calabria and 
easily became master of the peninsula. Nothing but the 
refusal of his army prevented an assault upon Sicily. The 
emperor had conquered southern Italy ; but for whom ? 
Feudally speaking, these lands were the property of the 
papacy, and when it had been decided to put them into new 
hands it became a question at once from whom the new 
owner should receive his investiture. The question seemed 
transferred from the religious to the political field, and the 
form of the solution was borrowed from the Concordat. 
The new duke received the lance, the symbol of allegiance, 
from the hands of the emperor and the pope at the same 
moment. 

After all a barren victory, for within a few months of the 
emperor's return these lands were all in the hands of king 



1 125-1 1 37] GERMAN LIFE IN THE NORTHEAST. 279 

Roger again, never for more than a century to pass out of 

the Norman line. Lothair died on his way home, leaving 

„ „ to his son-in-law, Henry the Proud, the insignia 

New Powers ' -' 70 

in the of the empire and the task of carrying on the 

Northeast. ^^^^ political combinations already prepared. 
Far more enduring were certain results of Lothair's policy 
in the far northeast. The appointment of the Premon- 
stratensian Norbert as archbishop of Magdeburg had been 
the beginning of a missionary activity among the Slavonic 
neighbors which was destined to bear the largest political 
fruits. New monastic foundations, based on the strictest 
revival of the Benedictine principles of practical devotion, 
were pushed out into the half-civilized Slavonic lands beyond 
the Elbe, and became so many new centres of a rapidly 
developing agriculture. Laborers flocked into these new 
regions from the more thickly populated parts of Germany, 
and, more important still, the industrial impulse from Italy 
and France began to make itself felt even here, and to bring 
men together into city communities that were fast coming to 
rival their older sisters of the West. 

Saxony, hitherto the most backward of the German stems, 

was fast taking its place in the van of civilization. The 

work of Lothair was really the building up of the 

Election of ^ ^ . . , , k ^ - ^ ^ - ^ ^ 

Conrad of Guelr power m the north. At his death it had 
Hohen- seemed almost a matter of course that the king- 

dom would pass into the hands of the great 
territorial lord, whose fortunes he had made. But here ap- 
peared that jealousy of great landed property which w^as so 
often to decide the issue of German elections. A small 
body of princes, meeting irregularly, declared for Conrad of 
Hohenstaufen, and were strong enough to carry through 
their plan. They were supported by the German clerical 
interest and were not seriously opposed by the Guelf party, 
whose chief aim was, for the present, to concentrate their 



280 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1137 

enormous territories, reaching from the Baltic to the Adriatic, 
into one irresistible economic unit. Yet one can see 
clearly outlining itself, for the first time, a distinct party 
opposition in Germany, that is, an opposition of two well- 
marked ideas, each finding its organ in a family, and, 
through several generations, continuing to dictate the policy 
of the empire. 

The very first act of the Hohenstaufen kingdom was to 
break the great territorial combination of its inevitable 
Pa f ti f opponent. A diet of 1138 declared that it was 
the Gueif unlawful for one prince to hold two dukedoms, 
err or es. ^^^ gave Saxony to a Saxon, Albert the Bear, of 
the Ascanian family, who had hitherto been the markgraf of 
the Nordmark, along the middle Elbe, and had called him- 
self markgraf of Brandenburg. It was to cost a long struggle 
yet before this transfer could be definitely settled, but we 
see in this step the beginning of that great development by 
which the little territory of Brandenburg was to grow into 
the present kingdom of Prussia. The same year another 
diet declared that Henry had forfeited the dukedom of 
Bavaria and gave it to Leopold, markgraf of Austria, a half- 
brother of the king. It should be remembered that in both 
these cases it was the administrative office of the duchy that 
was affected, not the private landed possessions of the Guelf 
prince. Henry the Proud died suddenly in 1139, before he 
had time to make any considerable demonstration against 
this overwhelming assault, but he left to his young son, the 
future Henry the Lion, a heritage of conflict, which was to 
furnish him the occupation of a long life. 

Thus through the advancement of the house of Branden- 

The Hohen- ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ North and that of Austria in the 
staufen Po- South, the Hohenstaufen kingdom was preparing 
sit on. II42. g^jj^gg upon whom it might well hope to count. 
A great diet at Frankfort in 11 42 proclaimed the peace 



1 142] HOHENSTAUFEN TRIUMPH IN GERMANY. 281 

of the empire, and the close family relations of the reigning 
house with its rivals seemed to put the seal upon this 
compact. King Conrad was, through his mother, the heir 
of the Salian property and traditions ; his brother Frederic 
was married to Judith Guelf, sister of Henry the Proud ; 
his half-brother, Henry of Austria, now married the widow 
of Henry the Proud, Gertrude, daughter of King Lothair. 
The historian of this period, the bishop Otto of Freisin- 
gen, also a half-brother of the king, sees in the situation 
in 1 1 42 the complete victory of the church over the em- 
pire. The ruin of the Guelf power was to him the result 
of a worldly policy, in which the interest of the church had 
been too little considered. The worthy bishop was to live 
long enough to see the attitude of Guelf and Staufen com- 
pletely reversed. 

The greatest triumph of the papal party was the gaining 
of Conrad of Hohenstaufen for the second crusade. The 

fiery preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux had 
Strengthened . i , i- , • 

by Partici- carried the crusading enthusiasm over into 

pationinthe Germany, and had proved strono- enough to 
Crusade. •^' , ^ , "^ . . "^ , 

overcome even the natural opposition of a 

Hohenstaufen to an undertaking which seemed likely to ad- 
vance the interest of the papal power. Conrad summoned 
his followers to Regensburg in the spring of 1147, and, with 
the usual hardships of the land journey through Hungary, 
reached Constantinople, but was delayed by one and another 
hindrance until the following year. Then, jointly with King 
Louis Vn of France, he made a desperate assault upon 
Damascus. The result was the total defeat of the united 
army. The prestige of the papacy, as the leader of the 
crusading movement, suffered a severe disaster.^ 

The chronicles of the time speak of the profound peace 
which, as if by a divine mediation, rested upon Europe 

1 See the chapter on the Crusades. 



282 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1152 

during the interval of the crusade ; but this peace was only 
the prelude to a renewal of the former issues. Henry 
Conrad's ^^^ Lion, now just coming of age, took up with 

Loss of more than his father's energy the claims of 

res ige. j^-^ f^j^j^y^ ^-^^ succeeded in the years 1150 and 
1 15 1 in getting for himself again the titles of duke of 
Saxony and duke of Bavaria. It must not be forgotten, 
however, that these names were coming to mean ever smal- 
ler and smaller parts of the great territories they had once 
covered. Albert the Bear, for instance, in giving up the 
ducal title was left in possession of a great Saxon territory, 
which was held "immediately" of the empire. So in 
Bavaria, the interest of the Austrian Babenbergers was 
gaining upon that of the dukes. 

The death of Conrad II in 1152, left matters in pretty 

much the same position in which they had been at his 

. election ; only that the interest of his family 

Frederic was strong enough to put through the election, 

Barbarossa.' according to his wish, of his nephew Frederic. 
Otto of Freising says that Frederic was selected as a key- 
stone to the great German political structure, because he 
represented both the warring elements of the time, his 
mother being a Guelf and his father a Staufer. If this was 
the motive of the electors, they were doomed to a speedy 
disappointment. So far as Germany was concerned, the 
struggle of Guelf and Staufen continues to be the central 
interest of its politics during the whole reign of Barba- 
rossa ; but for our purposes it will suffice to have outlined 
the main course of that conflict, and we shall turn our 
attention as, in fact, Frederic turned his, chiefly to the 
affairs of Italy. 

With Frederic Barbarossa we enter upon a new stage of 
the papal-imperial rivalry, but under very much changed 
conditions. The empire was to make one more gigantic 



1 1 52] HOHENSTAUFEN PROGRAMME IN ITALY. 283 

effort to revive all those memories of its theoretical Roman 

origin, which had carried it over so many obstacles in 

^^ „ ^ the previous centuries, and in doing this it was to 

The Hohen- ^ ° 

staufen rally to its help, not merely temporal weapons, 

Progframme. |^^^ ^^^^ those of learning and of legal tradition. 
It was to advance the theory, that, in all imperial lands, 
there was but one source of law, just as there had been in 
ancient Roman times, and that all other forms of political life 
must recognize this source. They must exist, if at all, only 
by its consent, and must make substantial payment for the 
right of existence. In Germany, the process was simpler, 
because here the empire was practically identical with the 
kingdom, and a German kingdom had existed from the days 
of Louis the German. Allegiance to this royal institution 
was expressed anew by the very act of choosing a king. In 
Italy the situation was different. The Italian kingdom was 
not, and never had been, a national institution. The Lom- 
bard rulers, though they had controlled nearly the whole 
peninsula, had been the kings of a conquering race, and had 
never stood for any national idea. The kings of the Franks 
in taking their place had succeeded to this same anomalous 

position, and when they had come to call them- 
Opposing: selves emperors, this had brought about no 
in Italy. actual change. The kings of Italy had been 

kings without a country. Without the help of 
the feudal idea, such absurd royalties as that of Hugo of 
Provence, or Rudolf of Burgundy, or young Conrad the 
Salian, would have been impossible. Even when such lead- 
ers as Arduin of Ivrea, Berengar of Friuli, or Guido of 
Spoleto, native-born Italians, had tried to create an Italian 
kingdom out of the scattered political members of the 
peninsula, they had found that the principle of unity, on 
which alone a monarchy could be based, was wholly wanting. 
The only Italian power from which an energetic policy 



284 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1152 

could be expected, the Norman kingdom of the south, never 
tried the experiment of uniting Italy, but spent its strength, 
first in developing its own resources, and then in wasting them 
on harebrained schemes of oriental conquest. Furthermore, 
there was no power in Italy which had succeeded in build- 
ing up even a strong and permanent territorial sovereignty. 
Tuscany, Spoleto, Benevento, Friuli, Verona, had, at one 
time and another, been held in the hands of energetic 
individuals, but in no one of these places had a strong 
dynasty been developed, which could for a moment be com- 
pared, for instance, with the house of Brandenburg, or of 
Austria, or of Staufen. 

The great distinction here is, after all, an economic one. 
While the development of Germany had been almost purely 

agricultural, that of Italy had never ceased to 
Influence of be largely industrial. During the whole feudal 
City-life. period it has been clear that the ancient Roman 

cities of Italy were not lending themselves to 
the new theory of political life with the same readiness as the 
great agricultural territories of France and Germany. The 
whole feudal theory rested upon the power of a lord to 
enforce the obedience of his followers, and to resist the 
aggression of his superior. The feudal castle in the midst 
of an open country was a retreat from violence which might 
come either from below or above. In the city this theory 
of power would not work. The lord of the city, be he count 
or bishop, could not easily defend himself against the 
pressure of his fellow-citizens. Men, gathered into cities 
and engaged in the industrial arts, rapidly get' acquainted 
with each other, readily exchange ideas, soon become 
conscious of rights, and organize means to defend them. 
The lord of the city, at variance with the populace, 
must sooner or later yield unless the population can be 
reduced to slavery, and that in the Italy of the eleventh 



1 1 52] THE LOMBARD COMMUNES. 285 

century was an alternative wholly beyond the limits of 
possibility. 

The beginnings of this development throughout Italy, but 
especially in Lombardy, we have already seen connecting 
themselves with the religious movement of the 
The Com- Gregorian reform. Resistance to the episcopal 
Lombardy. government had taught these industrial popula- 
tions the first great lesson of political inde- 
pendence : that if they were united and determined, no 
power could resist them. Again and again in the course of 
the religious conflict they had come out victorious from 
conflicts which had demanded skillful leadership, a clear 
consciousness of the ends desired, and a willingness to make 
sacrifices for them. The result was that by the time of 
Frederic Barbarossa, there had been nothing short of a 
revolution accomplished in Lombardy. In place of the 
episcopal administration there had grown up everywhere 
a popular form of government, so very modern in its charac- 
ter, that for the first time in our study we come to. a political 
institution that we can easily understand, an institution 
destined to revolutionize the whole face of European life. 

In using the word " commune " for this form of govern- 
ment we are not for a moment to think of anything " com- 
munistic." The word is taken simply from 

Their the Latin C07n7mmitas, and expresses merely the 

Political ., .,,--.. , ■'^ 

Organization, i^ea or the body oi citizens acting as a corporate 

whole. In the documents of the time we find 
quite as often the word imiversitas, denoting the same 
corporate unity. The stages of development from the con- 
trol of a local lord, usually the bishop, to complete inde- 
pendence, are very clearly marked, but not separated by 
precise limits of time. They pass one into the other 
gradually, and by the natural processes of struggle, com- 
promise and recognition. We have no distinct contem- 



286 THE UOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1152 

porary history of this development, but are forced to gather 
our information from scattered documents, in which refer- 
ence is made to existing poUtical forms. The earliest stage 
with which we have to do is that of the protest against the 
episcopal sovereignty in connection with the Gregorian 
reform. In the course of this conflict we find the com- 
mimitas engaging in regular negotiations with the bishops, 
and also with the members of the two orders of the higher 
and the lower nobility. 

The result was, quite early, that the authority of the 
bishop was either wholly abolished or limited by the estab- 
lishment of res^ular oro-ans of political expression. 
The Organs of ^ . . ^ ,^ 1 1 1 r ., , „ 

Expression JBegninrng at the top we nnd a body or ''consuls/ 

for the numbering from two to a dozen, composed of 

"Commune." 

promment citizens, elected for a year by some 

process of which we are not informed, and entrusted with 
the general executive business of the city. Such officers 
appear in some cities very early, under the Carolingian 
kings, but the time of their complete recognition is at the 
close of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth 
century. At that time, everywhere in Lombardy, the 
consular form of government may be regarded as definitely 
established. These chief executive officers were limited at 
every step by larger bodies elected from the bulk of citizens 
and organized into councils of varying size. Reminding us 
at once of ancient Roman and ancient Germanic traditions 
we find a gathering of all citizens, the concio, at first 
perhaps the only council, but gradually losing its political 
importance, and coming to be represented by the greater 
council {conciliu7n majus) destined to be a permanent ele- 
ment of the Italian republics. Out of this great council 
there grows then another, the concilium speciale, representing 
the aristocratic element of the community as the co?iciHum 
majus did the democratic. And again, by a tendency which 



1 1 52] THE LOMBARD COMMUNES. 287 

no democracy seems democratic enough to withstand, there 
was usually evolved a still narrower group, a "ring," within 
the smaller council, called the crede^iza. 

Although the bulk of this great political organization was 
made up of the industrial city population, it had to deal 
with a large body of persons living partly within 
with the 3,nd partly without the city, who represent the 
Outlying: feudal and aristocratic element of Lombard 
society. Two ways were open to this landed 
gentry : either to combat the industrial development of the 
cities, to ally themselves with its enemies and check the 
expansion of trade upon which it rested ; or, on the other 
hand, to accept it as a fact and, as far as possible, to throw 
their fortunes in with it and look forward to gaining thereby 
an influence over it. The solution of this problem was a 
matter of time, and it varied in different places, but in 
general it may be said to the credit of the political intelli- 
gence of the Lombard gentry, that, after a struggle, they 
gave up the narrower interests of their class, made common 
cause with the cities, were received into them as full 
citizens, and thus, by the force of wealth and capacity, rose 
to leading positions in the government. 

At the time of Frederic Barbarossa this consular organiza- 
tion was practically complete. All the Lombard communi- 
ties had taken the requisite steps towards forming 
Each other ^ republican constitution, and were fighting out 
their problems, each for itself. Yet, more and 
more as the process went on,tt became clear that there were 
common interests which could not be overlooked. The 
smaller the community, the more difficult it was for it to 
make itself felt against the opposing forces, and the more 
\ natural it was for it to seek support in a larger and more 
powerful commonwealth. On the other hand, the larger 
cities, like Milan, Pavia or Ravenna, found in this necessity 



288 - THE HOHEA'STAUFEN POLICY. [1152 

of their weaker sisters an opportunity for bringing them into 
a kind of irregular dependence and thus of making them- 
selves centres of groups of communities, bound together, it 
is true, by a very uncertain tie and liable to the most sudden 
and violent political convulsions. The course of Milan in 
all these dealings with her neighbors was especially over- 
bearing, and best illustrates the difficulty of the situation. 
The surrounding cities, such as Crema, Cremona, Lodi, ab- 
solutely needed the support of Milan, and yet to gain this 
they had to submit themselves to a hegemony which was 
always oppressive and at times unbearable. 

The most frequent occasion for these outbreaks between 
the cities was the question of their relation to the empire. 

While the cities formed thus the actual political 
th V°^" ° units in Italy, there was always, either active or 

slumbering, the theory of the overlordship of the 
emperor. In the long gaps, as for instance from the death 
of Henry III in 1056 to the coronation of his son in 1084, 
during which the empire was in abeyance, the development 
of the cities went on undisturbed. During the wnjle of the 
investiture quarrel their support had been too valuable to be 
risked by any excessive demands, nor was there during this 
time any theoretical denial of the emperor's over-sovereignty. 
It was a convenient fiction when, for instance, one city 
wanted a defense against another, or when, as in the time 
of Conrad II, one class of the Lombard population sought 
for help in its resistance to another. The trouble came 
when, as was the case by the time of Frederic I, the cities 
had grown to feel a sense of solidarity, more powerful than 
any other political sentiment. 

This consciousness of political rights was unquestionably 
fostered by the rapid growth of a branch of study which had 
been until then almost entirely unknown since the end of 
the Roman empire. It is a popular error that the Roman 



1 1 52] STUDY OF THE ROMAN LAW. 289 

law had disappeared from Italy. It had kept its place to a 
great extent in the Roman state by the side of the laws of 
the conquering peoples ; but it had not been in 
Legal study any systematic way an object of academic study. 
in Italy. j^ j^^^ been used just as the legal traditions of the 

Germans had been, for the practical ends of justice, but it 
had fallen into obscurity in consequence of the universal 
mediaeval tendency to treat law, not as a body of enact- 
ments, but simply as a mass of traditions, — the precious 
inheritance of a race, stamped so deeply into the race 
consciousness that they did not need to be either codified or 
studied. In the latter part of the eleventh century a reaction 
had come, furthered doubtless by the employment of the 
written code of Justinian, and we shall not be far wrong if 
we trace this reaction largely to the new necessities of the 
new city communities we have just been considering. The 
systematic teaching of the Roman law can be found at 
Bologna in the last quarter of the eleventh century, at first in 
the hands of'piivate teachers and then as the chief glory of 
the great university whose eight hundredth anniversary was 
celebrated in the year 1888. 

This study of the law marks in many ways an epoch in 
European affairs. For one thing, it furnished an avenue to 
Its Influence ^^ intellectual life for many a young man who 
uponPoiiti- formerly could have found no such opportunity 
ca eas. except in the study of theology. More important 
than this, it began to make men think about the principles 
of legal and so of political rights. From this time onward 
all claims whatever were supported by arguments very dif- 
ferent from those of the early middle period. Gradually 
laymen, educated in the law, came to take the place of 
purely clerical persons in the councils of kings and princes. 
The Roman law, outgrowth as it was of a great and highly 
centralized state, which after all was only the immense 



290 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [-11 54 

expansion of a city, seemed to lend itself with peculiar readi- 
ness to the demands of a time in which precisely these 
political factors were beginning to play a prominent parto 
The struggle of princes against their feudal vassals and the 
effort of cities to throw off the control of feudal obligations 
were met half-way by the suggestions of the only compact 
and scientific body of legal tradition available to them. It 
was to be a long battle yet, but we can never afford to lose 
out of sight this element of legal transformation, working 
along with other forces in the modification of society. 

The empire of the Salians had made use of the Lombard 
cities in its struggles with the papacy ; but the house of 

Hohenstaufen came to power with a greatly in- 
Hostility of , . . . , . , , , . . 

the Com- creased sense of mipenal rights, just as the cities 

munes to the were coming to the consc^'^usness of their own 
political importance. The empire was proposing 
to revive all the ancient Roman prerogatives at a moment 
when the cities were very little inclined to bear patiently any 
encroachments upon their own acquired privileges. A con- 
flict was inevitable, and it is, especially to the citizens of a 
modern republic, one of the most interesting of the whole 
middle period. From the very beginnings of Frederic Bar- 
barossa to the final settlement in 1183, a full generation of 
men, the struggle goes on. It will be possible for us to note 
only its *^ost striking points and to show how it becomes 
interwoven with the still larger questions of church and 
state. The first Italian expedition of Frederic in 1154 
brings us to the first of a series of very remarkable assem- 

^^ ^. ^ blies, at which the questions at issue were dis- 
The First ' ^ ^ 

Diet at cussed. In a vast plain just below Piacenza, 

Roncagiia. ^^ both sides of the Po, the imperial camp was 
pitched, "as had been," says Otto of Freising, "the custom 
of the emperors." Here Frederic received ambassadors 
from all parts of Italy, and heard complaints brought to him 



1 1 54] FREDERIC BARBAROSSA IN ITALY. 291 

as supreme judge over all the Italian powers. The Lombard 
cities improved the occasion to accuse each other of every 
kind of violence and bad faith, and Frederic, allying himself 
with Pavia, took up her quarrel against her neighbor Tortona 
and showed how thoroughly in earnest he was by utterly 
destroying the latter place. Even Milan was startled by 
this display of energy and took every means to set herself 
right with the emperor. It became evident that the imperial 
claims, hardly mentioned since the death of Henry IV, and 
never before brought forward with such distinctness, were 
going to be revived in entirely new forms. 

As Frederic drew near to Rome he found himself con- 
fronted by a new set of problems. The pope of the hour 

was Fladrian IV, the only English pope. He 
The Situa- r i . i j 

tioninRome was a ma^^ of character and energy, prepared 

and in to take the highest views of papal right, but he 

had been met at the outset of his administration 
by the most threatening demonstration of the old Roman 
spirit that had occurred since the times of Alberic. The 
democratic impulse, which we have been seeing in the 
north, had spread throughout Tuscany and had reached 
even Rome. Material for such an outburst was always 
on hand there, only waiting for leadership. The ancient 
glory of the Roman republic was always a thing to conjure 
with, and the more shadowy the actual connectioi^ ,of the 
present with the past, the more intense was the enthu- 
siasm that the "memory of that past might call forth. 
The political conditions at Rome were in many ways similar 
to, in others strikingly different from, those in Lombardy. 
The executive head of the city was here also a bishop, and 
the governing classes fell also naturally into the tw^o orders 
of a higher and a lower nobility. Here too was 2. populus, 
with its trade-guilds and its occasional flashes of political 
sense. Rome, like Milan, was the centre of a territory 



292 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1143 

comprising other smaller city communities, over which she 
exercised an influence which she was always eager to turn 
into an authority. But here the resemblance stops. The 
bishop of Rome was also the head of the Christian world ; 
his local interests were often quite overshadowed by this 
larger function ; the nobility of Rome had never been 
marked by that kind of political wisdom which had led the 
nobles of Lombardy to cast in their lot with the struggling 
communes, and the Roman bourgeoisie, corrupt and fickle, 
demoralized by the very institutions in which it placed 
its pride, was far from being the vigorous and persistent 
democracy which in Lombardy and Tuscany had gone 
straight at the ends of its political ambition, and won them 
by its own courage and skill. 

It is only by means of these resemblances and these 

differences that the events at Rome, just before the coming 

of Frederic Barbarossa, become intelligible. A 

The Revoiu- feud between Rome and the little town of Tivoli 

tiOnofthe • n ^^^ ^ r ^lr•^ t^ • 

Year 1 143. ^^^^-S m all respects like those or Milan or Bavia 
with their lesser neighbors. It was carried on 
by the Roman population with the same energy and with the 
same weapons that we have seen in the north ; but it was 
the policy of the papacy to reconcile these differences, and 
Innocent II, a man of peace, had made a treaty with the 
Tivolese upon terms favorable to them. This had brought 
out all that opposition of Roman against papal, which we 
have so often noted. The populace had risen in its might 
and driven its bishop from the city, just as the populace of 
Milan had done many a time before. It had then gone on 
and organized itself into a commune on the Lombard model, 
but with as much apparent restoration of ancient Roman 
institutions as the case would bear. 

The central figure in this political revolution is the Roman 
senate, not altogether a forgotten name in the earlier politics 



1 145] ARNOLD OF BRESCIA IN ROME. 293 

of the middle ages, but now for the first time given a definite 
organization, and put forward into the front of all the com- 
munal action of Rome. This revived . senate 
Revival of ^^s a body of fifty-six persons representing the 
Senate. several districts of the city, and vested with 

the supreme administration of affairs. The 
executive head of the city had been the Prefect, a crea- 
tion of the pope ; he was now replaced by a Patricms, a 
significant title, conveying the idea of a sovereignty derived 
from antiquity, and suggesting the notion of the Roman 
people as the source of all authority in Rome. The 
defense of the city was provided for by the creation of 
a new militia under the orders of the Senate. The first 
patricius was a Pierleone, a member of the highest aristoc- 
racy, who had been carried away by this democratic 
enthusiasm. 

This was in 1143. Two years later, attracted doubtless 

by a political movement of which later tradition has made 

him the originator, there came to Rome the man 

Arnold of whose najne has become inseparably connected 

Brescia. ^ith this crisis. Arnold was a priest of Brescia 

II4S. . _ - , , , , , 

in Lombardy, born and brought up m the midst 

of the communal struggles of the time. An eager student, 
not satisfied with the ordinary learning of his kind, he had 
wandered to Paris, and there had thrown himself with all 
the zeal of a young and ardent disciple into the ideas of the 
great master Abelard, then at the height of his unapproach- 
able success. The gist of these ideas lay in the application 
of the human reason to the great problems of human 
thought. Beginning with the loftiest speculations of phi- 
losophy and theology, this impulse could not stop there, but 
must inevitably go on to the practical questions of political 
and religious organization. If it were indeed true, as 
Abelard had implied, that the thought of the individual was 



294 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1145 

the last authority in settUng the foundations of belief, then 
men were at liberty, nay, they were bound, to use their 
thought also about those great institutions, which claimed 
the right of exemption from all human criticism. If the 
church were foul, and on this point there was the most 
abundant testimony of her most devoted supporters, such as 
St. Bernard, for instance, then it was the duty of upright 
men to say so, and to search for the sources of her foulness. 
Abelard himself was a philosopher ; he had not the stuff in 
him of which reformers are made ; but his ideas, falling 
upon the fertile soil of an eager and passionate nature like 
Arnold's, brought forth a crop of reformatory energy such as 
the church had never yet seen. 

Hitherto, when we have spoken of church reform, we have 

meant only the renewed vigor of principles already in action. 

The method of reform had been to increase ever 

Arnold's . , ^ , ^ r 1 

Theory of more and more the outward strength of the 
Church institution to be reformed ; if monasteries were 

foul, only make them more monastic ; if the 
clergy was too worldly, only give it larger resources, and 
these evils would cure themselves. Arnold was the earliest 
person to declare the folly of this logic, and to proclaim the 
principle that the only way to keep the church clean was to 
take away from her the temptation to evil by separating, 
once for all, her spiritual from her temporal functions. 
Already we have seen an instance in which this principle 
had been practically embodied in a public act ; the treaty of 
1 1 1 1 ; but the pope who had signed that act had found him- 
self met by universal execration, and it had been repudiated 
at the very first opportunity. 

Now, however, in the year 1143, this same principle had 
been made the basis of a political revolution in Rome itself, 
and it had been accompanied by such a demonstration of 
the ancient Roman traditions as had not been seen for 



1 1 54] THE ROMAN COMMUNE. 295 

generations. Arnold was precisely the man to add to this 
Roman impulse the element of theoretical defense it needed. 
Otto of Freising, his enemy, describes him as 
Arnold's " a man by no means stupid, but distinguished 
Rome!^^^ ^ rather for a flood of words than for the weight 
of his ideas ; a lover of oddity, eager for 
novelty, the kind of a man whose talents lead to the making 
of heresies and of schisms, — for he said that clergymen 
having property, bishops having regalia, and monks having 
possessions, could in no wise be saved." In other w^ords 
he was a popular orator, seeing through traditions to the 
spirit which was beneath them, and with that touch of the 
demagogue in him that was needed to keep the Romans 
up to the lofty standards of patriotism they had just set for 
themselves. The pope, Eugenius III, disciple and tool of 
St. Bernard, found Rome under these circumstances too 
hot to hold him, and spent the greater part of liis pontificate 
of eight years in exile, now in the neighborhood, trying to 
find a modus vivendi with the citizens, now beyond the Alps, 
with his tutor Bernard, enforcing an obedience he could not 
command at home. 

The success of the Romans in establishing their commune 
soon turned their heads. They were not a mere munici- 
pality like Milan : thev were the descendants of 
Rome as the r j i j 

Source of men who had governed the world. There is 
e mpire. pj-gserved a very noteworthy correspondence 
between the Romans and king Conrad III, in which they 
call upon him to come down into Italy and receive from 
their hands the imperial crown. They declare that they 
have now freed the eternal city from the enemies that have 
always stood in the way of former emperors and that, if he 
will come and set up his capital at Rome, he will have such 
a chance to reign as successor indeed of Constantine and 
Justinian as no emperor ever had before. The offer was 



296 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1154 

one that might well have turned the head of an Otto III, 

but the sturdy Hohenstaufen was no dreamer of dreams; 

the shallowness of these Roman pretensions could not 

escape him. Otto of Freising is probably right in saying 

that "the most Christian king refused to lend his ear to 

such words, or rather such babblings as these." Conrad 

never went to Rome and was never crowned emperor. 

This was the situation when Frederic arrived at Rome. 

The commune, strengthened by its extraordinarily long life 

of ten years, took on the boldest tone imagi- 
Frederic I ° 

and the nable. Its ambassadors went out to meet him 

Roman a^d made a most beautiful speech, in which they 

Commune. .... 

called his attention to their revival of the ancient 

splendors of Rome and then went on to say that all this 
renewed power they would hand over to him as their agent 
and executive, if he would pay them a round sum of money, 
would confirm their ancient privileges and bind himself to 
all this by written documents sealed with his oath. In 
Frederic's reply, doubtless a rhetorical composition of the 
historian, we have the clearest possible statement of the 
point at issue. He goes over in rapid review the history of 
the transfer of power from the ancient to the modern empire, 
resting it wholly upon that series of actual occurrences 
which it has been the purpose of the preceding chapters to 
describe. "You say that I have come at your summons. 
I have indeed; but why was I summoned.'' You were 
beaten down by your enemies and could not defend your- 
selves either by your own hand or with the help of the 
craven Greeks. You called upon the valor of the Franks; 
I should call that rather a petition than a summons; you, the 
wretched, the weak, the feeble, the terrified, called upon me, 
the proud, the strong, the mighty, the confident; that is the 
kind of a summons, if summons you can call it, on which I 
have come." As for terms it is not for the subject to ask 



1 1 55] . BARBAROSSA AND HADRIAN IV. 297 

terms of the sovereign, nor for a suppliant to demand money 
of him who comes with rescue in his hands. 

Setting rhetoric aside, we have here the plain declaration 

that Frederic, no less than Conrad, was determined not to 

recognize this sham republic as the heir of that 

Frederic and Rome from which he might find it convenient to 
Pope Hadrian . . , . . . , ^ . -__ , , . 

IV. II55. derive his imperial authority. He turned him- 
self wholly toward the papacy and found Hadrian 
only too glad, for the present, to make terms on condition 
of being restored to his authority in the city. The corona- 
tion was accomplished in St. Peter's, but it was only after a 
thoroughly vigorous defense of the Tiber bridge by the 
Romans, that emperor and pope could get into the city 
proper. The papacy, thus once again restored by German 
weapons, demanded its victim. Arnold of Brescia, captured 
by the emperor in the neighborhood of Rome, was handed 
over to the pope, condemned for heresy, delivered up to the 
restored papal prefect and burned at the stake, the first in 
the long series of martyrs to liberty, whose blood stains the 
records of the triumphant church. The same combination of 
the highest powers in church and state was to reappear again 
and again throughout the long history of this persecution. 

Happily, however, this combination was not, for the 
present, to be of long duration. The pope could not main- 
tain himself in Rome and Frederic had more 
as "B^efi" pressing business in the north. The momentary 
cinm"of the harmony of the two swords was almost immedi- 
1157.^"^* ately broken by the rise of the same fundamental 

questions which had lain beneath the struggle of 
the investiture. A trifling act of omission on the part of 
the emperor brought out from the pope an indignant 
remonstrance. In the message, sent by two of his most 
trusty servants, one of whom was destined to become, as 
Alexander III, the bitterest opponent of Frederic, Hadrian 



298 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1157 

went into the theory of the two powers in a tone as lofty as 
that of Hildebrand. The affair was brought before the 
emperor while he was holding court at Besangon and when 
the legate came to the passage "if your excellency should 
ask still greater beneficia of us," this chance word, mean- 
ing at once "favor" and "fief," so angered the followers of 
Frederic that they broke out into tumultuous protest, to 
which one of the legates replied " from whom then has he 
the empire if not from our lord, the pope ? " a speech that 
nearly cost him his life. However little offense the pope 
may have intended, it is clear from his own words in a 
general letter sent out soon after, that Frederic believed the 
intention to have been to assert the feudal vassalage of the 
empire to the papacy. 

No less difficult were the questions still unsettled as to 
the relation of the empire to the freedom of the Lombard 

^^ „ cities. To bring: all these matters to discussion 

The Roncag- ^ 

lian Diet of and final settlement Frederic summoned his vas- 
^^ ^* sals to another great assembly on the Roncaglian 

plain, in order, as he says in his proclamation, that the laws 
of the kingdoms over which he is by the grace of God called 
upon to rule, may be once for all determined and put into 
written form. Already Milan had shown herself so little 
mindful of former agreements that in the course of this same 
expedition Frederic had been obliged to carry on a regular 
siege of the place, and had compelled a peace on terms 
favorable to himself and to the neighboring communes. 
The determination of the vexed questions of law was put 
into the hands of four of the most famous doctors of the 
law-school at Bologna, to whom were added twenty-eight 

representatives of the communes themselves. 
The Regalia. . . , 

The most important inquiry was as to the pre- 
cise nature of the so-called " regalia ^^^ by which are here 
meant the rights which tlie emperor, as the successor of 



1 1 58] THE RONCAGLIAN DIET. 299 

the Lombard kings, could properly demand of the cities. 
These were now carefully defined and the list has come 
down to us. They were, first, a great variety of taxes in 
the form of tolls, fines and confiscations ; then, the main- 
tenance of the emperor and his army, the so-called 
'-'■ fodrum,^^ a most oppressive tax which might be expanded 
to almost any limits ; finally, the right to appoint, with the 
approval of the commune, the chief administrative officers. 
These rights were declared to be the property of the king, 
and were formally recognized as such by the cities. Taken 
in their entirety they amounted to a practical surrender of 
all that the communes had gained in their years of struggle, 
and it could not have been expected that they would long 
stand the test of actual trial. 

Up to this point the emperor had kept at least the form 
of harmony with the pope whom he had set on the throne 

__,... of Peter. But now, havinp^ made clear his view 
Conflict of ... 

Imperial and of the imperial rights over temporal powers, he 
Papal Rights, j^^^ g^'ii ^^ £^^g ^^ question of his relation to 

the papacy. The declaration of the regalian rights was not 
intended for Lombardy alone ; it was a general definition of 
the imperial claims on all imperial lands, including, therefore, 
the papal territories. The pope thus found himself almost 
at once thrown upon the side of the Lombards and proceeded 
to define in the largest terms his view of the papal counter- 
claims. There is in these declarations nothing novel for 
us ; they were only a repetition of the Hildebrandine theory, 
fortified by a still more elaborate appeal to legal tradition. 
Frederic's answers are on an equally lofty key. His defini- 
tion of the empire is no less magnificent than Hadrian's, and 
his appeal too is to the binding force of the Roman tradition, 
backed up by the substantial facts of the whole Frankish 
supremacy, from Charlemagne, through the Ottos, and the 
Henrys, down to himself. 



300 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1160 

This war of the law-doctors would have been ridiculous if 

it had not been followed up with the utmost energy by all 

three parties interested. Empire, papacy and 
Alliance of . ir ■> r i- j 

Papacy and commune, each threw itself into the conflict with 
the Com- a spirit such as had not been seen for genera- 
tions. The death of Hadrian in the midst of the 
fight did not check its progress. His successor was that 
cardinal Roland, who at Besangon had declared that the 
empire owed its existence to the papacy. As Alexander III 
he became the centre of the whole resistance to the Hohen- 
staufen empire, and during a long administration of twenty- 
two years, opposed by four successive anti-popes, maintained 
the cause at once of papal and municipal independence 
with unbroken energy and with considerable success. This 
alliance of the papacy and the commune must not be thought 
of as showing any tenderness on the part of the papacy 
towards the ideas of democracy. On the contrary, those 
communes that were under the papal government were no 
less hardly treated than their fellows under the imperial. It 
was only one of those many alliances into which the papacy 
was led in order to gain help against its still more dangerous 
enemy, the empire. 

The test of the Roncaglian legislation came when the 
emperor tried to carry out that clause which gave him the 

, ^ rigfht to nominate the mas^istrates of the cities. 
Renewal of => ° 

the Conflict The smaller communes, less able to resist and 
in Lombardy. half-welcoming a support against the hegemony 
of Milan, allowed the imperial deputies to direct their elec- 
tions, but Milan, falling back upon previous negotiations 
which it declared superior to the Roncaglian agreements, 
resisted. The cooler heads tried to mediate, but the mass 
of the people, the really active political force in the city, 
broke out anew into furious protests of independence. The 
imperial messengers were driven out of the city and every 



1 1 62] DESTRUCTION OF MILAN. 301 

preparation was made for a vigorous defense. The emperor 
on his side saw plainly that the time for paper declarations 
had passed and that nothing but force could decide the 
V questions at issue. He utilized the jealousy of the lesser 
cities as far as he could to raise money, got together a large 
army and went into a regular siege of Milan. The city 
resisted with the energy of a community that is fighting for 
a great principle and knows that defeat means ruin. It was 
not until the late spring of 1162 that the citizens, conquered 
by famine, finally, after long negotiations, surrendered un- 
conditionally. The verdict of the emperor's council was for 

_ ^ ^. the total destruction of Milan : and in this 
Destruction ' 

of Milan. decision the lesser communes not only heartily 
^^^^' concurred, but lent their hands to the work with 

all the zeal of a petty revenge. A great part of the build- 
ings were destroyed, a part of the walls leveled, only the 
churches and some of the public buildings spared. Extermi- 
nation of the inhabitants seems not to have been thought 
of, but rather that Milan should be made forever incapable 
of taking up the part of a leader in revolt. The surrender 
of the city was carried out with every circumstance of humili- 
ation and with every possible assurance for the future. 
The citizens were distributed in four suburban quarters, and 
according to a later tradition, the city was ploughed up 
and sown with salt as a sign of its utter ruin as a human 
habitation. The lesser communes felt themselves deliv- 
ered from an oppressive tyranny, and looked forward without 
alarm to the mild sway of the imperial government. 

The folly of this action was very soon evident. If Milan 

had been overbearing, she had also been a bul- 
Reaction . ... 

of the wark, ever foremost m assertmg rights common 

Communal ^o all the cities and ready to take the brunt of 
Spirit. . . , 

the nnperial assault against them. Her humilia- 
tion, far from being a relief, was an irremediable loss. The 



302 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1167 

imperial administration, no longer restrained by the fear of 

resistance, showed itself in its true ''light as a system of 

intolerable exactions, deliberately contrived to crush out 

that communal energy which had carried these cities up 

to such a height of wealth and power. The discontent 

naturally roused by this oppression was skillfully worked 

up by the agents of Alexander III, himself a victim of the 

imperial policy and now forced to go a-begging for support 

through the countries of the north. 

Within five years after the fall of Milan the Lombard 

communities had learned bitterly to repent their hasty action. 

One of the articles of Roncaglia had been that 
Beginnings . , . ^ ^ ^ -, i • • i 

of the ^o federations should be entered into without 

Lombard the emperor's consent ; but the time had come 
when the sense of communal liberty was to find 
a new expression in just this form. Hitherto it had been, 
every town for itself. Now, taught by experience, the 
leaders of Lombard politics had come to see, as did our 
own fathers more than a hundred years ago, that only in 
union was there hope of security and progress. Cautiously 
and with the utmost secrecy, the four cities, Cremona, 
Brescia, Bergamo and Mantua came together and discussed 
plans for a permanent alliance. It is of the utmost interest 
to every student of free institutions to see how the first 
simple idea of a union for military defense gradually took 
on the form of a political organization, which was to stop 
just short of being an enduring federation. The first indi- 
cation of this development was an agreement entered into 
by at least three of the original cities to rebuild Milan. No 
more splendid tribute could have been paid to the value of 
that city, than this voluntary act of the very neighbors who 
had demanded her destruction and lent their own hands to 
accomplish it. 

The rapidity of the restoration is evidence that the 



1 1 68] THE LOMBARD LEAGUE. ■ 303 

destruction had not been as complete as some accounts 

would indicate. Within a few months we find the 
The Leag'ne . .... 

under Milanese again distinctly in the lead and carry- 

Milan's ing on the federate idea to a triumphant success. 

Leadership. _ . , , ..-„.'. „, 

One after another the cities tell into line. Ine 

terms demanded by Lodi for her accession are most in- 
structive ; they show the struggle, the basis of all free 
federations, to maintain the integrity of each individual 
member, while each should also make some sacrifice for 
the common good. We discern here the awakening of that 
sense of comity between political units, out of which was to 
grow that modern creation which we call international law, 
and the first feeble expressions of modern political economy 
are also to be found here. Protection and free trade are 
seen in evident conflict : the merchants of Lodi are to pay 
no duties in the territories of the four cities, — or, if such 
a duty should be imposed, Lodi may exact an equal one 
in her own harbor, — an early specimen of "reciprocity." 
Damage done to Lodi by a hostile force must be repaired 
within a month at the expense of the League. The passage 
of the Po is to be as free to the Lodians as to the Pavians. 
These agreements are for a hundred years and may upon 
demand be confirmed by a new oath every ten years. Lodi 
on her part, while reserving her allegiance to the emperor, 
declared that this meant only the recognition of such rights 
as he had had a hundred years before. These are actions 
on a small scale, but they mean far more for European 
progress than the much larger conflicts with which the 
royal annals are filled. 

Through the accession of Parma and Piacenza, purchased 
by quite similar concessions, the League now included eight 
of the leading communities of Lombardy, whose territories 
taken together formed a solid complex, held together by the 
most evident political and commercial advantages. In the 



304 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1168 

northeast a similar league had already been formed between 

Venice, Verona and several neighboring towns. All this 

brilliant display of civic energy could seem to 
The League -^ . 

and the the emperor only rebellion and the violation 

Emperor of solemn oaths. He declared the allied cities 
in Conflict. i 1 1 c ^ • 1 ■, r 

under the ban of the empire and prepared for 

an immediate assault. The answer was that the League 

put itself into active relation with the league of Verona and 

with several isolated cities and brought about articles of 

agreement signed by sixteen communes, regulating the 

action of each signer in case of an imperial attack. Their 

cause was distinctly strengthened by the activity of the 

bishop of the new Milan, a man wholly in the interest of 

Alexander III and eager to identify still further the cause 

of the Italian patriots with that of the papac}^ A most 

important step was the establishment of a regular federal 

executive body composed of "Rectors," chosen from among 

the consuls of the several cities and vested with very 

considerable independent powers. 

The only support left to the emperor in Lombardy was 

the city of Pavia and the territories lying at the foot of the 

Alps in the far northwest. If the League had 
tionof taken an offensive, instead of a purely defensive 

Alexandria, attitude, it might easily have caught the emperor 

as he made his way, with considerable difficulty, 
northward through these regions. Probably it was sug- 
gested by Frederic's escape at this time that here was the 
most important strategic point for the future. In the 
spring of 11 68 representatives from several cities gathered at 
the little village of Rovoreto on the borders of Pavia, Mont- 
ferrat and other imperial territories and took possession of 
it in the name of the League. The work of building a new 
city here went on with incredible rapidity. Walls were laid 
with great care, streets planned and houses, chiefly of wood 



II74] BARBAROSSA AGAINST THE LEAGUE. 305 

with thatched roofs, run up hastily to serve the first needs 
of the defenders. Colonists, largely from the imperial 
territories, poured into the place, to which, in honor of 
the pope, was given the name of Alexandria. Consuls of 
the new city appear at a meeting of the League in May, 
1 1 68, and within a year it is said to have had fifteen thou- 
sand fighting men at its disposal. 

At this same assembly a series of new regulations were 
passed, all looking towards strengthening the federal idea in 

the League, and regulating the rights of indi- 
Tlie Emperor . , , i v t-u • f n 

attacks the vidual communes under it. 1 he six years rollow- 

Leagfue. ij-^g were a severe strain upon the fidelity of these 

young and jealous communities to the new rela- 
tion into which they had entered. Naturally, their individual 
privileges still remained dearest, and there were enough of 
ancient grudges left over to keep up a constant friction. It 
is the best tribute to the force of the federal impulse that 
when Frederic, who had spent these years in strengthening 
himself in every way in Germany, returned to the attack, he 
found scarce a single element of the Lombard population 
ready to desert its colors. Only the feudal lords of the 
Alpine region, representatives of a political past, saw in him 
a savior from their enforced friendship with the League. 
The first assault fell upon Alexandria, and it was directed 
with the full force of all that personal energy and unscru- 
pulousness that marked every act of Frederic Barbarossa. 
For nearly six months, without help from their allies, the 
Alexandrians demonstrated to the full the value of their new 
position. In April, 1175, th^ League, after much negotia- 
tion, got a large army into fighting order and reached the 
scene of action. On the plain of Montebello they formed in 
full battle array and awaited the attack of the emperor, who 
had definitely abandoned the siege of Alexandria and was 
preparing to march southward. Once more the Lombards 



306 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1176 

showed that their object was not to fight, but to stand in 

defense of their liberties if these should be attacked. In 

spite of their immense advantage, or perhaps on account of 

it, they went into negotiations and agreed to terms, by which 

the sovereignty of the emperor should be admitted, and the 

detail of mutual rights and obligations be brought before a 

joint commission, whose decision should be binding. 

The outcome was what might have been expected, what 

it must always be when opposing interests have come to a 

definite crisis. The time for compromises had 

The Battle jDassed, and when the communes came to con- 

of Legnano. • i i • • • 

JIY6. sider the matter m detail, their demands were 

such as the emperor could not meet without sur- 
rendering the point he had most at heart. There can be no 
doubt that the agents of Pope Alexander were in the last 
degree anxious that no peace should be made except on the 
most favorable terms for the communes. The negotiations 
failed, and skirmishing began almost immediately on both 
sides. The League in solemn assembly renewed the former 
oaths of mutual fidelity while Frederic, on his part, found 
himself forced into every possible device for gathering and 
keeping an army. The famous story of. his throwing him- 
self on the ground before his most powerful vassal, Henry 
the Lion, may not be true in detail, but it represents fairly 
well the kind of relation upon which the power of the 
mediaeval king depended, and brings out into vivid contrast 
the splendid display of patriotism which the despised com- 
munes of Lombardy were making at the same moment. 
The response to Frederic's summons in Germany had not 
been altogether reassuring. The army which came over the 
Alps at this critical moment numbered not over 2000 men, 
of whom half were knights. The attack was aimed directly 
at Milan, and found her fully prepared, with very consider- 
able contingents from the allied cities. The two armies met 



1 176] THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO. 307 

in the plain of Legnano, about fifteen miles north of Milan, 
and the battle opened at once. At the first assault of 
the German knights the Lombard cavalry gave way and 
scattered in every direction, allowing the Germans to push 
on to where the Milanese, horse and foot, were gathered 
about their Carroccio, the sacred banner of the commune, 
mounted on a wagon and always pushed into the thick of 
the fight. Here the fortune of the battle turned ; the 
Milanese infantry held firm and threw the Germans into 
disorder. Rallied again and again they kept up the fight 
until evening, and then, at the order of the emperor, broke 
into a retreat, which proved to be a rout. The emperor him- 
self disappeared for several hours and was believed to be 
lost, when he suddenly reappeared in Pavia with a handful 
of followers. 

The battle of Legnano is one of the very few decisive 

battles of the Middle Ages. Its interest lies in the fact that 

it was not a mere mediaeval feat of arms for the 

'^i^^J^^^^"f sake of the fight, but a contest for life and death 
of the Battle. ^ ' 

between two great political ideas ; not entered 
into hastily, but prepared for by a long history of negotia- 
tion, compromise and sacrifice. The merit of the victory 
belonged above all to Milan, and this served to place her 
again in the front of Lombard affairs. Moderate proposi- 
tion's, laid before the allied cities by Cremona, were rejected 
with contempt ; the active forces of the League were 
determined not to retreat in the smallest particular from 
their fundamental propositions. The emperor for his 
part saw himself beaten, and entered at once upon a 
series of negotiations with the papacy looking towards the 
settlement, on terms favorable to Rome, of aD the diffi- 
culties between them. The definite adjustment of the 
double problem was left to a grand assembly of all parties 
at Venice. 



308 THE HOHEiXSTAUFEN POLICY. [1177 

We have here the earliest case in modern history of a 

peace convention, called deliberately to discuss the existing 

situation, and to provide a remedy. The City of 

Treaty of the Lasfoons steps out here for the first time 

Venice. 

1177. * into the foreground of European politics, eager 

worthily to welcome the two greatest powers of 
the West, and to lend its powerful aid in adjusting their 
differences. The pope was first on the ground, and, in 
fact, carried the negotiations up to the point of agreement 
before Frederic, who had meanwhile waited on the main- 
land at some distance from the city, was admitted to a 
personal interview. The advantage in the Treaty of Venice 
was wholly against the empire. Alexander had shown him- 
self a most skillful diplomat, had maintained himself against 
no less than four successive anti-popes, and had strengthened 
himself in the allegiance of all the northern countries. The 
communes, elated with their success at Legnano, were push- 
ing for fuller acknowledgment "of their practical independ- 
ence. Nothing- was so important for Frederic as to scatter 
his enemies, and this could be done only through harmony 
with the papacy. 

The stages of the negotiations can be clearly traced in 
documents of undoubted genuineness. At a diet at Wiirz- 
burg in 1165, Frederic, supported by the German 
erms princes, had declared his unalterable determina- 

tion never to make peace with Alexander, and 
had bound both himself and the princes to maintain the 
sch^"^^" 1 at any cost. The events of the next ten years had 
completely overturned this compact. Immediately after 
Legnano, Frederic had sent ambassadors to confer with 
Alexander and a scheme of concessions on both sides had 
been drawn up, the execution of which was to be furthered 
by the ambassadors in every possible way. The settlement 
at Venice was made on the basis of these agreements of 



1 177] THE TREATY OF VENICE. 309 

Anagni. No amount of German patriotic interpretation can 

conceal the fact that underneath the courtly forms of the 

final diplomatic language, and in spite of all the splendors 

of the festive celebration, we can discern the beginning of 

the end of the mediaeval empire. True, the theoretical 

rights of the emperor in Italy were made the balance to the 

recognition of Alexander as lawful pope ; but on the one 

hand we see the desperate attempt to bolster up a power 

against which the real forces of Italian politics were banded 

with irresistible strength, while on the other we see the 

papal institution, as yet hardly threatened by those still 

larger forces of European nationality and the re-awakening 

of the human mind, which were to bring it down in its turn. 

The chief gainers at Venice were the Lombards, to whom, 

with reservation of the ultimate settlement of details, a truce 

„ ^ ^ , of six years was ensured. The reconciliation 
Hohenstaufen -^ 

against with Alexander was the opportunity for Frederic 

^^® to turn his attention once more to the north, and 

especially to break, if possible, the overgrown power of 
that Henry the Lion, to whose disloyalty he owed, probably, 
his crushing defeat at Legnano. With the full support of 
the princes, all jealous of this great gathering of power into 
the hands of one of their number, he summoned Henry four 
times to appear before the judgment seat of the empire, and 
upon his refusal, declared him in the imperial ban. Never 
in the history of the empire had there been, apparently, so 
brilliant a display of imperial power. With full approval of 
the princes, especially of the clergy, the great Guelf wis 
declared to be deprived of all his possessions excepting nis 
inherited estates in and about Brunswick, and was driven 
into exile. On the face of it this was a triumph of the 
central power over its most dangerous local rival. In reality 
it was the victory of a multitude of princes, chiefly clerical, 
over one of their number who had grown dangerously fat 



310 THE HOHENSTA UFEN FOLIC Y. \ ' [i 183 

upon the substance they coveted. The emperor was hardly 
more than the mouth-piece for this jealousy of the petty 
princes. The vast estates of the Guelf, both in Saxony and 
Bavaria, were not, as would have been the case a century 
before, handed over to some one or two great lords who 
would be most likely to maintain the cause of the emperor, 
but were divided up into a vast multitude of little holdings 
and distributed to those princes whose voices had been 
loudest in demanding Henry's condemnation. The limits of 
the duchies of Saxony and Bavaria were again reduced. 
The dukedom in Saxony passed into the hands of Bernhard 
of Anhalt, the son of Albert the Bear. The Bavarian duke- 
dom was given to Otto of Wittelsbach, and, with a change 
of title, remains in his family to this day. Naturally, the 
princes who were to profit by the downfall of Henry the 
Lion were willing to lend a hand in enforcing the edict, and 
thus the emperor was able to carry out the verdict of the 
diet. This year, 1180, marks the definite abandonment of 
that system of great stem-duchies upon which the German 
kingdom had until then been based, and the beginning of a 
new Germany, resting upon a conglomeration of personal 
territorial holdings, partly feudal, partly allodial. The Ger- 
man king stands above the mass of his subjects by virtue of 
his personal influence. He is strong in proportion as he is 
able to gratify the wishes of this greedy throng ; but he is 
powerless unless in a given case he can gain followers 
enough by means of concessions to one set of subjects, to 
induce them to fight with him against another set. 

The proof of this is seen in the dealings with Lombardy 
when the six years' truce had run out. It might well have 
been expected that Frederic, after the fall of 
Constance. Henry the Lion had bound so great a body of 
^^^^' the German princes to his interest, would have 

called upon them to demonstrate their loyalty by following 



1 183] THE PEACE OF CONSTANCE. 311 

him over into Lombardy and chastising the insolent citizens 
who had presumed, not only to have rights, but to defend 
them with such spirit and success. Instead of this we find 
him anticipating a still more vigorous action of the Lom- 
bards, and sending over ambassadors to confer with them as 
to the terms of a lasting peace. The result was the great 
Peace of Constance, the earliest international agreement of 
the kind in modern history. By its terms the nominal over- 
lordship of the emperor in Lombardy was re-asserted, as, in 
fact, it had never been denied. With this exception the 
communes were recognized as practically independent. 
Wherever they had previously chosen their own officers they 
were to do so still ; their money payments to the emperor 
were to be regulated on an equitable basis, and with the ex- 
ception of an appeal to the emperor's court in more impor- 
tant suits at law their administration of their own affairs 
was to be unquestioned. 

Thus, both in Germany and in Italy, the monarchy had 
gained its right to exist by concessions that lamed it as an 

effective administrative machine. Yet outwardly, 
The Hohen- . . 

staufen Mon- viewed m the light of the feudal arrangements, it 

archy at its ^^3 ^ very splendid institution indeed. Its srreat 
Height. II84. , ^ . , . ^ . 

demonstration was at the Diet of Mainz m 1184. 

The grateful vassals, large and small, freed from the aggres- 
sive energy of Henry the Lion, and relieved of the necessity 
of going on another Italian expedition, were willing for the 
moment to forget all concealed animosities and came to- 
gether at Mainz in unprecedented numbers. The occasion 
was made a grand fete of knightly sports, literary display, 
religious devotion and national loyalty. Another even more 
trying test of the hold of the great Hohenstaufen upon his 
people was his taking of the cross and the summons to 
follow him to Jerusalem. The enthusiastic response to this 
summons shows that other motives than mere reluctance 



312 THE HOHENSTAUFEN POLICY. [1184 

had held men back from the ItaUan wars. The account of 
the journey to the East, ending with the death of the aging 
emperor, belongs in the history of the crusades ; it interests 
us here only as illustrating the highest point of the German 
monarchical experiment. Its meaning becomes clear only 
when compared with the parallel development of the mon- 
archical idea in France and in England. 



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CHAPTER X. 
THE PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. 1197-1268. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Huillard-Breholles, J. L. A. Historia diplomatica Frederici II. 

6 vols. 1859-61. With an historical introduction in French. 
GuiLLAUME DE TuDELE. Histoire de la Croisade contre les here- 

tiques albigeois. Fr. tr. by Fauriel, 1837 ; also original and tr., 1879. 
Petrus Sarnensis. Historia de factis et triiunphis Simonis, comitis 

de Monteforti, etc. Bouquet Historians, etc., xix. 
Chanson de la Croisade contre les Albigeois ; ed. Meyer with Fr. tr. 

2 vols. 1875. 
EiKE VON Repgow. Sachsenspiegel, ed. Weiske. 6th ed. 1882. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Lorenz, O. Deutsche Geschichte im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. 2 vols. 

1863-67. 
ToECHE, Th. Jahrblicher des Deutschen Reichs unter Heinrich VI. 

1867. 
WiNKELMANN, Ed. Philipp V. Schwaben und Otto IV v. Braun- 
schweig. 2 vols. 1873-78. 
Maurenbrecher, W. Geschichte der Deutschen Konigswahlen vom 

zehnten bis zum dreizehnt^n Jahrhundert. 1S89. 
Schirrmacher, F. W. Kaiser Friedrich II. 4 vols. 1859-65. 
Kington. History of Frederic II, Emperor of the Romans. 2 vols. 

1862. 
WiNKELMANN, Ed. JahrbUcher des Deutschen Reichs unter Friedrich 

II. vol. i. 1889. 
Blondel, G. £tude sur la Politique de I'Empereur Frederic II en 

Allemagne. 1892. An attempt to trace the changes in the German 

constitution under the Hohenstaufen policy. 
Schirrmacher, F. W. Die letzten Hohenstaufen. 1871. 



314 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1198 

DoLLlNGER, J. J. I. VON. Das Papstthum. 1892. A new edition 
of "The Pope and the Council " by "Janus." 1870. 

Schmidt, Ch. Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou 
Albigeois. 2 vols. 1849. Still the best account. 

Brunel, Louis. Les Vaudois des Alpes fran5aises. 2 vols. 1890. 

CoMBA, Emilio. History of the Waldenses of Italy to the Reforma- 
tion. 1889. 

Cantu Cesare. Gli Eretici d' Italia. 3 vols. 1865-66. 

DoLLiNGER, J. J. I. VON. Beitrage zur Sektengeschichte des Mittel- 
alters. 1890. Especially Albigensians. 

Maitland, S. R. Facts and Documents illustrative of the history, 
ete., of the Albigenses and Waldenses. 1832. 

Molinier, C. L'Inquisition dans le midi de la France. 1881. 

ScHULZ, A. Das hofische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger. 2 vols. 
1879-80. 

Legge, a. O. The Growth of the Temporal Power of the Papacy. 
1870. 

RocQUAiN, Felix. La papaute au moyen age. 1881. Studies of the 
four great popes. 

Felten, J. Papst Gregor IX. 1886. 

At the death of Frederic Barbarossa, the power of the 

papacy was decidedly in the ascendant. It had succeeded 

in allying itself with those human interests which 

The Papacy seemed most likely to govern the policy of the 
in the Year . , . . t i i • r 

J200. immediate future. It had again come out 01 a 

conflict with the empire victorious in all that 
made a victory worth having. It had put itself in the front 
of the great heroic impulse of the crusades, and thereby 
commended itself to the imagination of a time, perhaps the 
most sensitive in all European history to the value of pre- 
cisely such ideals. It was arming itself for a thorough- 
going purification of the soil of Europe from the stain of 
heretical beliefs, now just beginning to be dangerous to its 
absolute dominion. 

This aspect of the triumphant papacy is embodied in the 
person of Innocent III (1198-1216), but before coming to 
his administration we have to notice one more desperate 



iiQi] THE NORMAN MARRIAGE. 315 

attempt of the empire to make itself master of the Italian 
peninsula. The Peace of Constance (1183) had 
■^^itS^^^^^ left the theoretical over-lordship of the emperor 
in Italy unquestioned, but had gone so far in 
guaranteeing to the local powers the unrestricted exercise of 
their political rights, that this over-lordship proved a toler- 
ably barren dignity. The weak point in the imperial hold 
on Italy was, as it always had been, that the emperor had 
next to no land in the peninsula that was his very own, and 
the sentiment of loyalty to a royal tradition which served 
him in Germany in place of a great landed possession, was 
here almost entirely wanting. 

If only this defect could be made good, it seemed, 

humanly speaking, as if the future might definitely be 

secured. The passing of the inheritance of the 

The Norman kingdom of Naples and Sicily into the hands of 
Marriage. ^ ^ • -, 1 r i 

II86. ^ woman as sole heiress, opened out before the 

Hohenstaufen policy precisely the opportunity it 

wanted. Already in 1186 this opportunity had been seized, 

and king Henry, recognized as successor to his father 

Frederic I, had married Constance, daughter of king 

Roger II, and aunt of the reigning king William II. The 

death of William, leaving Constance as his heir, occurred 

just before that of Frederic I, and was the welcome excuse 

to Henry VI for leading an army into southern Italy and 

enforcing by arms his claim to a crown over which he had 

no other right. The imperial title which he took by the way 

in 1 191 could add nothing to his claim in southern Italy, 

since the Norman kingdom had never, except in the vaguest 

terms, acknowledged the over-lordship of the emperor. Its 

constitution was a new one, borrowed from Norman ideas, 

and its people were as passionately attached to their dynasty 

as they were passionately hostile to anything like German 

interference. 



316 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1197 

This loyalty found its expression in a determined resist- 
ance under the leadership of Tancred, an illegitimate mem- 
ber of the house of Hauteville. It was four 
The Papacy years before Henry, after the most desperate 

in 3. Vice. - - - . - - , 

II94. Struggle, was able to get possession of his crown. 

At the moment of his entry with fire and sword 
into Palermo, his wife gave birth to the son under whom 
this great political move was to show its value and its 
dangers. The chief item in the Hohenstaufen calculation 
had doubtless been the attractive prospect of getting the 
papacy into such a tight place between one imperial territory 
on the north, and another on the south, that it would be 
forced to give up its attitude of opposition and fall in with 
the theory of universal empire. For the moment this ideal 
was postponed by a series of accidents. Henry 
died three years after his entry into Palermo, 
hated throughout his southern lands with the bitterest 
hatred as the representative of a foreign tyranny, and within 
a year from that time the papal power passed into the hands 
of a man as well fitted to carry it to its greatest heights as 
ever pope had been. 

At the beginning of the reign of Innocent III, it is clear 
that the papacy was entering upon a new phase of its exist- 
ence. Never before had the conditions for its 

^nocent's success been so favorable. The apparent check 
opportunity. ^^ 

it had received in the Concordat of Worms had 

not seriously interfered with its progress along the same 

lines in other states. It may safely be said that reverence 

for the papal institution was never before and never was to 

be again more wide-spread or more sincere. Not only had 

its patronage of the popular moTcment and its leadership in 

the crusades given it an immense hold upon the political 

interests of Europe ; its theory had become a part of the 

universal thought as to the true nature of the church and, 



1 198] ITALIAN POLICY OF INNOCENT IIL 317 

in the dominant philosophy of the time, the scholastic 
system, it was finding a theoretical defense in forms 
destined to be permanent. 

A review of the various activities of the great pope will 
offer us the best opportunity to bring together the several 

lines of development which had been going on 
Innocent's in the different countries of Europe in relation to 
Italy. th^ papacy. To begin with Italy. The real 

moving force in all the politics of Italy had now 
come to be the interest of the cities, each to secure to itself 
as large a measure as possible of individual liberty. The 
fierce energy of Henry VI had succeeded in keeping down 
the municipal spirit in many parts of the country, and in 
reviving for the last time the feudal partition of Italy into 
something like its earlier territorial divisions. The rule of 
the imperial feudal governors bore very hard upon all parts 
of the peninsula with the exception of Lombardy, and even 
here the fine spirit of unity which had given them the Peace 
of Constance had not made the cities equal to the task of 
keeping down their local jealousies. It was the policy of 
Innocent to revive all the slumbering hostility against these 
German governors, and to put himself forward as the 
champion of Italian independence. By working upon every 
feeling of discontent, and holding clearly before the mind of 
the Italians the great advantage they would gain from his 
support, he succeeded, in the face of great apparent odds, 
in getting rid of the German control through middle Italy, 
and putting in place of it the papal protection. 

Innocent may properly be regarded as the real founder of 

the papal state. Not since the time of Pippin 

Foundation had the claims of the papacy to an actual terri- 

of the Papal . r r j 

State. tonal sovereignty been so near realization. In 

the year of Innocent's accession the leading cities 

of Tuscany had made a league similar to that in Lombardy, 



318 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II [1201 

with strong expressions of loyalty to the papacy, and 
equally strong resolutions never to admit an imperial gov- 
ernor into their limits. Innocent tried his best to convert 
this alliance into an allegiance. The communal spirit in 
such towns as Florence, Siena and Lucca, was too strong 
for him, but in the southern part of Tuscany, which had 
formerly been reckoned to the Patrimo?iiu7n Pet?'i, he suc- 
ceeded in fixing permanently the papal authority. On the 
eastern side of the Apennines, as far northward as Ravenna, 
his success was complete. The sham feudalities of Henry 
VI disappeared, and the cities accepted without resistance 
the mild over-lordship of the pope. In the year 1201, the 
emperor Otto IV guaranteed to the pope the territory from 
Radicofano, on the borders of Tuscany, to the mountain 
passes of Ceperano, on the borders of the Neapolitan king- 
dom, the exarchate of Ravenna, the Pentapolis, the mark 
Ancona, the duchy of Spoleto, and the allodial estates of 
the countess Matilda. The imperial fiefs of Matilda, the 
bone of contention between empire and papacy for more than 
a hundred years, lose their significance from this time on 
in the growing importance of the independent cities which 
absorbed all there was of political activity within these 
limits. 

The maintenance of this strong central state was the 
counter-check to the Hohenstauf en-Norman alliance. A 

^ ,„ further hold upon this combination seemed to be 
Innocent III. ^ 

and Frederic offered by the willingness of the Norman widow 
of Sicily. q£ Henry VI to intrust her future to the keeping 
of the pope. Immediately before her death the former vas- 
sal position of the kingdom towards the papacy was renewed 
and sealed by the appointment of the pope himself as the 
guardian of the infant Frederic, in whom the consummation 
of his father's policy was embodied. In spite of the tradi- 
tional enmity of the papacy and the house of Hohenstaufen, 



1 198] INNOCENT AND THE EMPIRE. 319 

the great pope seems to have carried out his trust in entire 

good faith and to have relied upon the force of his poUtical 

gains in the centre to overcome the dangers of a possible 

combination of the extremes of the peninsula. In fact, so 

curiously did the larger politics of the empire get twisted 

about, that towards the close of his life Innocent found it 

for his advantage to champion the cause of his ward against 

the very Guelf powers that for three generations had made 

the papal alliance the key to their whole policy. 

The explanation of this will be seen in the history of 

affairs in Germany after the death of Henry VI. Never 

^, ,. ^ since the death of Henry III, nearly a hundred 
Election of . 

Philip of and fifty years before, had the German princes 
Swaoia. been willing to try the experiment of a minority 

rule. Dread of the dangers almost certain to attend such a 
minority had been one of the reasons why Henry VI had 
failed to secure the support of the princes in a scheme for 
making the empire hereditary in his house, on condition 
that he should recognize the inheritance of all the great 
fiefs. The answer had been that these fiefs were already 
hereditary, and that the only security against tyranny was 
the maintenance of the elective principle for the empire. 
Upon this understanding the infant Frederic had been 
elected king of the Romans, but when it came to making 
him actually ruling sovereign the princes refused to consent, 
and easily persuaded his uncle Philip, who had at first put 
himself forward only as the guardian of his nephew's interest, 
to accept an election for himself. Philip was supported by 
all those interests which looked to the Hohenstaufen party 
for protection against the too great ambition of the Guelf, 
and his following might be described as a majority of the 
electors. We must, however, be careful not to use this term 
" electors " too precisely. While the college of cardinals 
had by this time come to be fully recognized as the only 



320 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1198 

body capable of making a lawful pope, its rival, the German 

electoral college, was only just beginning to emerge from the 

general mass of the princes. 

The election of Philip took place at Arnstadt in Thuringia 

in the spring of 1198. The head of the opposition was the 

archbishop of Coloo;ne, who, with the help of 
Rival Em- / . ^ ^. , / 

perors, PMiip comparatively tew ot the northwestern princes 

and Otto the and backed up by English influence, put forward 
Guelf . . . 

as a rival candidate the younger son of Henry 

the Lion, count Otto of Brunswick. The great advance in 

political sentiment in Europe is seen in the fact that this 

rivalry of two German princes becomes the central point of 

a very complicated international quarrel. For the first time 

we see the countries of Europe, as. such, taking sides in a 

great controversy. Otto was the nephew of the kings 

Richard and John of England, and as such the natural enemy 

of the vigorous and ambitious king Philip Augustus of 

France. Philip of Swabia was equally heir to an enmity 

against the house of Guelf which turned him against 

England, and so, naturally, to the French alliance. Each of 

the greater sovereigns found it worth his while to improve 

this foreign quarrel to the advantage of his own interests. 

Still more important for the rival candidates seemed to be 

the support of the papacy. Their negotiations on this side 

^ ,_ interest us as showins: the theoretical basis of 
Innocent in ^ 

and tiie Rival the imperial power as interpreted by the papacy. 
Emperors. ^^ have, fortunately, preserved to us the corre- 
spondence of the supporters of both parties with the pope, 
and his replies leave no room for doubt as to the real 
motives which actuated him. He examines at great length 
the claims of the three rivals, for as guardian of Frederic he 
was bound to remember that the princes had bound them- 
selves by oath to support him. On this point he does not 
waste much time : — oaths are very acred things, yes 



1 198] INNOCENT AND THE EMPIRE. 321 

indeed, especially when, as in this case, they are taken with- 
out compulsion, but when these oaths were taken the princes 
supposed, of course, that Henry would live his time out ; 
therefore, the conditions being changed, the oaths are no 
longer binding. That disposed of Frederic. Then as to 
Philip: — his election was undoubtedly by the majority of 
the princes, but numbers were not the most important 
element. There were many reasons why he was not a 
suitable candidate. In the first place he had sworn to 
defend the claims of his nephew and so barred himself, — 
the pope apparently forgets that he has just explained away 
the oaths of the other princes on this point. Then Philip's 
election was at an unusual place and under unusual forms. 
He was at the time under the ban of the papacy on account 
of injuries against the papal state. Finally, and most im- 
portant, he is the hereditary enemy of the "church," i.e., of 
the papacy, and cannot be trusted with so great an accession 
of power. 

On the other hand. Otto, although elected by but few 
princes, was chosen at the proper place, and is supported by 
f ^ majority of those " to whom the right of elec- 
supporting- tion especially belongs." Furthermore, he comes 
of a house which has always been distinguished 
for loyalty to the papal cause and he can be depended upon 
to continue the same policy. In this decision two elements 
are especially important, the theory of the election and the 
interest of the papacy. As to the first, the reference to place 
and to the character of Otto's supporters as being those " to 
whom the right of election especially belongs," indicates that 
by this time there was at least some kind of understanding 
as to the persons who led in the choice of emperor. To 
discover in these vague phrases an organized electoral col- 
lege is going too far. We have no right to say more than 
that we are on the eve of such organization, and that the 



322 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1205 

struggles of this crisis were probably the most effectual 
means of convincing the German princes that they needed 
some strict constitutional forms of election, just as the 
hopeless conflicts in papal elections gave the final impulse 
to the fixing of the college of cardinals. 

The actual moving power in the papal decision was un- 
questionably quite independent of German constitutional 
questions. It was the interest of the papacy, 
crowned at The pope would support the candidate who was 

Aachen. most likely to support him. The frankness of 

1205. ^ / ^^ 1 ■ . 1-1 

Innocent s statements on this pomt makes it clear 

that he did not regard this as a blameworthy motive in any 
respect. Otto promptly paid his debts by giving to the pope 
the guarantee of territory we have already mentioned.^ The 
contest between the two rivals in Germany went on without 
any regard to the papal decision. The vast majority of the 
princes supported Philip, and he became king in fact after a 
renewed coronation at Aachen by the archbishop of Cologne 
in the early part of 1205. The submission of the great 
archbishoprics paved the way for a reconciliation with the 
pope, and Philip showed all willingness to go half-way in 
this direction. The sun of the Hohenstaufens seemed about 
to clear itself of all the mists of opposition, when suddenly, 
in the midst of peaceful occupations, the king was murdered 
in a private quarrel. 

At once the partisans of Otto rallied about their leader 
and he found no resistance to his claim upon the throne. 
IV ^^ ^^^ ^^ unity of parties he married Beatrice, 

recog-nized daughter of his bitter rival. The prospect was 
as King. ^^^ ^^ interests of Guelf and Hohenstaufen 
would thus be united, but the differences between them 
proved to be too deeply rooted. It will be observed that, 
so far as our history goes, marriage alliances play but very 

1 See p. 318. 



i2o8] FREDERIC II AGAINST OTTO IV. 323 

little part in the actual politics of Europe. It remained 

for the prevalence of the hereditary principle to give to 

such ties more than a mere personal character. Germany, 

for the moment exhausted by civil strife, was content to 

submit to a rule for which it had never shown enthusiasm. 

Meanwhile, in his southern home, the boy Frederic was 

ripening into a youth of whom no report could be too ex- 

rr^^ ^ 4.1. ^ travap;ant. It was his Sfood fortune that he had 
The Yotitli of *5 te 

Frederic II. not been put forward into the strife of the em- 
II94-I2I . p-j.g ^^ j^-g father's death. His education in 

Sicily had been of the most careful, and nowhere in Europe 
at that day could a youth of promise find more to inspire his 
growing powers. The beginnings of modern culture, based 
both upon the study of classical antiquity and upon the 
free use of the common tongues, were just making them- 
selves felt in the keenly intelligent populations of southern 
Europe. The literature of the troubadours, dealing as it did 
with the subjects of human life as opposed to the sole 
interest of religion, had made its way from southern France 
into Sicily, and found there a people sensitive in every way 
to impressions of poetry and romance. By his sixteenth 
year the young prince had come to be called by his devoted 
people "the wonder of the world." Even the flattery of 
courtiers cannot obscure the fact that Frederic was a person 
of extraordinary endowments, one of those rare personalities 
who, from first to last, leave upon their surroundings a last- 
ing impression of individual power. He had grown up as 
an Italian ; and the choice of two other princes had seemed 
to make it clear that Germany had made up its mind to 
do without him. 

The summons of Frederic from his retirement in Sicily to 
the certain dangers and the doubtful glories of the imperial 
name shows that there was still something to conjure with 
in the name of Hohenstaufen. It stood in German politics 



324 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1212 

for the free development of territorial lordships in return 
for supplies with which to maintain the glory of the empire 
Frederic ^" Italy, and this free development was just 

summoned what the leading princes were most anxious to 
ermany. j^g^p^ "Y\i^ Guelf supremacy on the other hand 
had been identified with the spread of a great family at 
the expense of its neighbors ; between the two the electors 
preferred the Staufen. The administration of Otto had not 
been such as to conciliate opposition. Even with the pope 
he had not been able to get on ; the inevitable conflict of 
the imperial and the papal interests had made itself felt 
from the moment Otto had become firm in his seat. The 
result was that in the year 12 12 Frederic, then just in his 
eighteenth year, received a secret embassy from discontented 
subjects in Germany, offering him the German crown if he 
would come and get it. The advice of his Sicilian counsel- 
ors and the persuasions of his wife, not to risk all he had 
in a hare-brained scheme of reckless ambition, could not 
outweigh in his mind the possibilities of realizing in his 
person the combination of the empire and the Apulian king- 
dom, which had been the chief aim of the policy of his 
house. His argument was that whoever held the empire 
was sure to try to get his kingdom too, and it might as well 
be he as another. The undertaking was one quite in har- 
mony with his romantic nature and the adventurous spirit of 
the times. 

With only a very small following, living upon the hos- 
pitality of one and another city on his way, he slipped 

„. .„. through all the traps his enemies had set for 

His Allies ^ ^ 

and Ms him and found himself in the autumn of 1212 at 

Success. ^^ head of a very considerable array of princes 

on German soil. He had secured the papal support by 
recognizing in the fullest measure the feudal supremacy of 
the pope over the kingdom of Naples ; he now renewed his 



1 2 14] BATTLE OF BOUVINES. 325 

family alliance with Philip of France, who promised him 

support and sent him a large sum of money for present 

expenses. In Germany he held diets at Frankfurt and 

Mainz and received the homage of the greater part of the 

princes. Otto, still strong in the northwestern parts of 

Germany, believing that the real kernel of the combination 

against him was to be sought in France, instead of moving 

against Frederic entered into a counter-combination with all 

the enemies of Philip, The chief of these were king John 

of England and the count Ferrand of Flanders, and almost 

all the higher nobility of northern France were drawn into 

the alliance. 

For the first time we begin to find the language and the 

feeling of modern international warfare. Until now when 

kings had come into collision, it had been rather 

Bottvines, ^^ feudal lords than as heads of nations. In 

the First 

Modern the preparations for the battle of Bouvines we 

I2I4 ^' ^^^^ distinct indications of national sentiment, 

mingled as yet, of course, with plenty of mediae- 
val, feudal motives. For one thing, the armies promised by 
Otto's confederates and actually put into the field were of 
very considerable size. They were equipped with great com- 
pleteness by Flemish zeal and English money and seem to 
have felt themselves even more than most mediaeval forces, 
to be acting under a kind of commission to punish a man 
whose strength and ambition were a common threat to 
feudal liberties. Opposed to this dangerous league we find 
the French king relying wholly upon the gains already made 
by the royal power in controlling the service of its vassals. 
So far as the great central region of France was concerned 
this reliance proved secure. The summons to arms to repel 
invasion was answered by almost all the chivalry of the 
centre and the southeast. The defense, like the attack, 
was divided into two parts, one army under the crown 



326 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [12 14 

prince, Louis, moving toward the west to meet the attack 
of king John who had landed at Rochelle and gained very 
considerable support in that region. The main French 
army under Philip was moved northward to the Flemish 
frontier where the confederates had assembled. 

Near the village of Bouvines this royal army reversed its 
march in order to secure a better ground for battle and 
was at once followed up by the enemy, who believed it to 
be in retreat. The fighting, opened by the confederates, 
occupied the greater part of Sunday, July 27th, and ended 
with a complete victory for the French. There is nothing 
in the process of the fight worthy of especial notice except- 
ing the large part played on both sides by the contingents 
of the cities. It would hardly be too much to say that the 
fate of Bouvines, like that of Legnano, was decided by 
the steady bravery of these humble foot-soldiers, though, 
naturally, the chronicles are filled chiefly with the doughty 
deeds of individual knightly combatants. The victory at 
Bouvines was unquestionably a great gain for the cause of 
European monarchy. It was a blow to the feudal theory 
everywhere. It demonstrated beyond question that the 
French king could, at a critical moment, rely upon the 
allegiance of a vast proportion of his subjects and that a 
national army under a single guiding will was a more effect- 
ive instrument than a much larger force under divided lead- 
ership and animated by no common tradition or common 
purpose. 

In Germany the effect of the battle of Bouvines was 
immensely to strengthen the cause of Frederic. The pres- 
tige of Otto, supported as it had been largely by 

_f , ^^^ forei2:n influence, was gone and he retired into 
Frederic n. ^ ' » 

obscurity upon his own lands in Saxony where 
he died in 1218. ' The success of Frederic might in no small 
degree be attributed to the support of Innocent III who, of 



121 s] FREDERIC SUPREME IN GERMANY. 327 

course, did not fail to claim his reward in due season. One 
of the earliest of Frederic's documents is a promise to 
renounce in favor of his son Henry all claims to the king- 
dom of Naples and Sicily, as soon as he should be crowned 
emperor, so that the danger which had so long been threat- 
ening the papacy might forever be averted. The death of 
Innocent in 12 16 occurred before the condition, namely the 
imperial coronation of Frederic, had been fulfilled. 

Although in this German conflict the pope had found 
himself on the same side with the king of France, he had 

by no means always stood in friendly relations 
Innocent ni . . . . ^, \ ,,,,.. 

and Philip With him. 1 he early years of his administration 

Augustus of had been marked by a long and bitter quarrel 
France. 

between the two which, in many of its details, 

reminds us of the conflict between pope Nicholas I and 
king Lothair II. Philip Augustus was left a widower just 
before the third Crusade and soon after became a suitor 
for the hand of Ingeborg, sister of king Knut of Denmark. 
The suit prospered, Ingeborg came to France and, according 
to her evidence, denied by Philip, the marriage was con- 
summated. Immediately afterward the king declared himself 
unable to treat her as his wife, professing the deepest 
repugnance to her, but giving no satisfactory reasons. 
Ingeborg was kept in a more or less strict confinement, 
refused the honors of a queen and totally separated from 
her alleged husband. A divorce process instituted by the 
king was approved by the highest clergymen of France and 
the queen's appeal to Rome, arriving during the last day's 
of pope Celestine III, met with no vigorous response. 

Innocent III, almost immediately upon his accession, took 

The King's ^P ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^ accustomed energy. He 

Divorce went back at once to the case of Lothair II and 

rested fairly and squarely upon the sole right of 

the papacy to decide in the last resort in a case involving 



328 PAPAL TKIUATPH 0VP:R FREDERIC II. [1200- 

the question of marriage, undoubtedly one of the subjects 
belonging in the ecclesiastical forum. It is the old conflict 
of national unity, whether in church or state, as against 
the all-embracing scheme of the papal theocracy. Innocent 
grasped the question in its full import and faced it boldly. 
Either the head of the nation must do as he bids or the 
nation must take the consequences. If the nation refuses 
to give the church its rights, then the church, through its 
head, will withdraw from the nation those religious privileges 
of which it is the sole administrator. The king summoned 
to his aid all the resources of a kingdom already becoming 
united in loyalty to its royal house and always strongly 
impressed with a sense of its unity as against all foreign 
aggression. He appealed to the increasing sense of law, 
which was beginning to have its effect in all public life ; he 
promised, he threatened, he blustered in every possible 
fashion. The good will of the French people was on his 
side. He had felt himself so strong, in fact, that he had, 
some years before, proceeded to the choice of a new wife. 
The beautiful Agnes of Meran, a woman of great spirit and 
an irresistible charm, consented to accept the dangerous 
proposal and gave herself to the king with a devotion which 
was ardently returned.- 

The new marriage was solemnized in due form and two 
children were already the fruits of it when Innocent began 
his rule. The extreme threat of the interdict was not 
enough to move the king to reconsider his action and the 
pope, through his special legates, proceeded to 
Interdict in carry his threat into effect. The contemporary 
France. accounts of the interdict, which during a period 

of seven months lay upon the whole land of France, repre- 
sent it as of the most terrible character. Only the sac- 
raments of baptism and of the extreme unction could 
be administered. Divine service ceased throughout the 



I200] INNOCENT III AND FRANCE. 329 

country. Churches were closed, would-be worshipers were 

driven from the doors, the dead lay unburied, a terrible 

silence as of the tomb brooded over the land, and so forth. 

However much of monkish eloquence and exaggeration 

there may be in these recitals, the historical fact is beyond 

question that the effect of the interdict was to rouse against 

the king a kind of hostility he could not afford to overlook. 

As in the case of the excommunication of Henry IV in 

Germany, the result was the gradual loosening of the ties 

of loyalty in the king^s own subjects. How much stronger 

those ties were in the France of the thirteenth than in the 

Germany of the eleventh century is proved by the greater 

length of the resistance and the entire absence of dangerous 

rebellions in any quarter. The pressure of which the 

chronicles speak is that of the great city populations, stirred 

to the very depths of their superstitious piety by their 

long-continued deprivation of the necessities of religion. 

Throughout the contest in France there was always most 

prominent the element of personal wrong on the part of 

the king. When that had been removed by his outward 

compliance with the demand of the pope, the interdict 

was instantly raised and, though the injured queen never 

recovered 'her conjugal rights, the papacy never thought 

it worth while to insist upon further concessions. The 

unhappy Agnes was sent into retirement where, after giving 

birth to a third child, she died. 

In the dealings of Innocent with king John of England 

the issue is far less a personal and far more a national one. 

Grounds for personal attack there were enough, 
Innocent m ^ ^ , . 5. . . , . . 

and King- ^^^ John m his marital relations was quite as 

joiinof unscrupulous as Philip and at the very time of 

England. , . . . , -^ . , 1,1, 

his enmity with Innocent, might well have been 

put to his trial on this account. The fact is, however, that 

we hear next to nothing of this matter ; the issue of the 



330 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1205 

quarrel was a quite different one. The point involved was 

the same as that in the German war of the investitures, 

namely to what extent the national and the papal interests 

should affect the appointment of clergymen in England. 

Down to this time the ancient rights of patronage had not 

been seriously disturbed by the spread of the Gregorian 

ideas. Innocent determined to carry out these ideas in the 

full meaning of his great predecessor. A test case soon 

arose in regard to Canterbury, the most important see of 

the realm. The nominating body there had for long been 

the monks of Christchurch, whose nomination was then 

confirmed by the king. In the vacancy of 1205, a candidate 

had been put forward by a part of the monks and sent on 

to Rome for confirmation, while another, feet up by another 

faction of the monks, had received the approval of the king. 

Both sides appealed to Rome. Innocent declared first, that 

the monks had the sole right of nomination, without regard 

to the suffragan bishops, who claimed also a share and, 

secondly, that he would confirm neither of the candidates 

who had appealed to him. In their place and in virtue of 

his supreme judicial authority, he presented as his candidate 

Stephen Langton, an Englishman of the highest learning 

and character, a man in every way suited to the place. 

John resisted by every means within the reach 
Langton, the . 1 r j 1 • • n 

Papal Arch- ^^ ^^ unscrupulous leudal sovereign, especially 

hishop of by seizing on revenues of the church and 
Canterbury. . . . , r 1 • r 1 

appropriating them to the support of his fol- 
lowers. Innocent, having seen the good results of the 
interdict in France, resorted to the same measure in 
England. The accounts of "the working of the English 

interdict, coming largely from the same sources. 

The interiict (jgscj-ji^g \i \-^ \\y^ same lansfuaoe as that employed 
in England. . 

in regard to France. The sufferings of the un- 
happy people are detailed in painful completeness. The fact 



121 5] INNOCENT III AND ENGLAND. 331 

is, however, that the people of England got on somehow 
without the consolations of religion for four years, and it is 
not until three years after the cessation of the interdict that 
the leaders of English politics took any decided action 
against the king. Furthermore, it is a singular comment 
upon the force of the papal ban that the personal unpopu- 
larity of the king, great as it may have been, did not 
move his subjects to take advantage of it to renounce 
their allegiance. 

John himself gave way and that most completely, going 
to the fatal extreme of actually accepting his crown in 
vassalage from Rome. This was too much for 
i!r^^^ . the patience of Englishmen and resulted in the 

rapid growth of a feeling of English right as 
opposed to royal right, which took form' in Magna Charta. 
Our present interest is to note that Innocent III, when he 
had got what he wanted from John, became his best sup- 
porter against those whom he characterized as rebels and 
traitors, because they had declared that they would not bear 
the irregular and unlawful exactions of a tyrannical king. It 
is a singular illustration of the force of the feudal theory that 
the barons at Runnymede did not raise fatal objections to 
the vassalage of England to the Holy See and that the 
tribute by which that vassalage was -acknowledged was paid 
with more or less regularity for a hundred years, not to be 
formally refused until the days of Wiclif. 

In the lesser countries of Europe we find Innocent carry- 
ing out the same system to even greater results. In the 

peninsula of Spain he found pretexts for inter- 
Innocentm f^ . . , ^, . ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ .. ., 

and the lermg m the anairs oi Portugal, Leon, Castile 

Lesser states ^^d ArasTon, the new states into which the penin- 
of Europe. 

sula had fallen as the control of the Moham- 
medans gradually receded towards the south. Pedro of 
Aragon indeed went so far as to come personally to Rome 



332 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [ii 98-1 216 

and accept both his crown and his kingdom in vassalage from 
the Holy See. In the military and diplomatic complications 
in which all four of the Spanish states were involved, Inno- 
cent set himself up as final arbiter and in no case without 
a considerable measure of success. The threat of the inter- 
dict or the excommunication, proven to be so efficacious 
when backed up by favorable conditions, was freely em- 
ployed and thus the ultimate issue, — obey or be cursed, — 
was plainly indicated to every sovereign power. The same 
restless energy led Innocent into successful interference in 
the affairs of Bohemia, Hungary, Dalmatia, Bulgaria and 
even the far-away Armenia. 

If now we compare the action of Innocent in the several 
European countries, we see that it illustrates perfectly the 

Greporian theory of the papacy. It was dictated 
Innocentm . ^ , , • r 1 • .c 

and the i'^ every case by the mterest of the papacy itself. 

Gregorian j^: took lofty sfround on moral questions when 
Principle. , . . , . , . 

this was convenient tor its ultimate purpose, 

but it would be the insanity of fair-mindedness to see in 

Innocent III the champion of abstract Christian right and 

justice for its own sake. One result of his administration 

was to make it perfectly clear that no national life was 

possible in Europe so long as this Gregorian principle was 

allowed to act. Every sovereign was necessarily the enemy 

of the papacy the moment he thought of himself as the actual 

disposer of the resources of his own country. Otto IV was 

the friend of Innocent only so long as he was out of power ; 

the instant he became sole ruler he was driven of necessity 

into the anti-papal camp. Philip Augustus and John were 

each obliged to purchase the alliance of the pope by a 

pressure from below which it was in the power of Rome 

to screw up or down almost at its will. The problem of 

the waning Middle Ages was : how long could this burden 

upon the free development of national life be borne ? 



c. 1200] INNOCENT III AND THE EAITH. 333 

In the chapter on Scholasticism we shall have occasion 

to notice a form of religious thought which, for lack of a 

better term we shall call " Manicheism," and 

I^^ .^ X which had besfun to have a powerful and wide- 
Growtli of ° ^ . 

"Heretical" spread effect upon the populations of Europe. 

Thoug-iit j^g earliest public appearance in western Europe. 

m Europe. t^ rtr r 

had been in France in the year 1022 and from, 
that time on it was never wholly out of sight. In all the 
European countries, with very different names and in widely 
varying forms it had gone on gaining in numbers and in its 
hold upon considerable groups of men. We have noticed 
it in Italy under the name of the "Pataria" forming one of 
the elements in the building up of the Gregorian party. It 
had formed one of the accusations, true or false, against 
Arnold of Brescia ; it found expression in the life and work 
of a notable movement in southern France in the early 
twelfth century under the leadership of one Peter de Bruys, 
from whom the sect were called Petrobrussians. This leader 
was burnt, the persecution was general wherever the doc- 
trines could be unearthed, but in spite of all opposition they 
went on, carrying with them masses of the common people 
and threatening in places to drive out the orthodox faith 
altogether. The accounts we have of these heretical move- 
ments are considerable in quantity, but they have left us in 
much obscurity as to the origin of the ideas they carried 
and as to their relation one to the other. 

There is, however, one distinction which seems to be 
pretty well established : while all these hostile sects found 
Alb'e-e e themselves in opposition to Rome, there were 
and some in which the element of opposition was 

a enses largely doctrinal and speculative, while in others 
the chief emphasis was on the life of the individual and the 
uselessness, or even wickedness of the elaborate forms of 
the Roman machinery. The former of these classes were 



334 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [c. 1200 

the alleged Manicheans, in all their variety ; the latter may 
properly be called Anti-sacerdotalists, a term which implies 
hostility to the church organization. Of these two classes 
the Albigenses typify the former, the Waldenses the latter. 
The Waldenses take their name, probably, from one Petrus 
Waldus who appeared in the neighborhood of the city of 
Lyons about 1170, preaching a simple "apostolic" faith 
and life. It is highly probable that Waldus was only 
giving expression to ideas that had long since been held in 
that region and had been called out into action by all the 
reforming agencies of the time. It is important to remem- 
ber that while this method of reform became branded with 
the name of heresy, its aims were essentially the same as 
those of the monastic preachers, and that, if the church had 
seen fit to employ all this reformatory zeal in its own work, 
it might have found just as effective allies in the Poor Men 
of Lyons as in the orders of Dominic and Francis which 
were so soon to begin their career of incredible success. 

The foundation principle of the Waldenses was that the 
Bible contained enough for the guidance of all Christians, 
_. that the simple order of the apostles was all that 

Waidensian was needed for the management of the church, 
rincip es. ^^^ ih.2X the life was more important than con- 
formity to outward standards of faith. To follow the Bible 
they must read it, and so they ventured upon the step, which 
seems so simple and natural to us, but which at that time 
was thought by the church to be full of dangers, of making 
and spreading abroad translations of parts of the Scriptures. 
Their chief criticism of the existing order of things was 
directed against the wealth, the luxury and the unchristian - 
conduct of the clergy. In this respect they said no more 
than all reformers were saying ; but their unpardonable sin 
was that they formed an organization of their own, without 
any apostolic succession, without a priesthood, without any. 



c. 1200] ALBIGENSIANS AND WALDENSIANS. 335 

beyond the most simple sacramental system, and for this 
they have been persecuted by the triumphant church from 
that day almost to our own. The seat of the Waldenses 
was chiefly in the mountains of Piedmont. They were 
almost entirely hard-working peasants and artisans, with no 
powerful protection from any source. The power of their 
ideas is seen in the constancy with which they have stood 
out against every kind of persecution, until at last, in the 
regeneration of Italy, they have found their opportunity, 
and under the same venerable name are now growing and 
prospering in every city of the peninsula. 

Quite different from all this is the character of the heresy 
which under the name of the " Albigensian " now called 
Th Alb'- forth the utmost vigor of the great pope for its 
gensian suppression. The Albigensians, so called from 

eresy. ^^ town of Albi in Languedoc, were a branch of 

a widely spread group of persons who could not be satisfied 
with the Christian theory of the universe and its govern- 
ment. While they differed very widely in details, all mem- 
bers of this group agreed in their fundamental notion that 
the only reasonable explanation of the existence of evil in 
the world was to give up, once for all, the idea of a single 
administration of the universe. If there were only one God 
and that an all-powerful one, why had he not done his work 
better ? Why had he, the all-good, allowed so much evil 
to get into the world ? Why had he, the all-wise, apparently 
made so many mistakes in his management of things? The 
ready answer to all this was, that there was not one God 
but two, one good, wise, perfect, absolute ; the other evil, 
capable of errors, imperfect, limited. Such reasoning has 
satisfied vast masses of men. For instance, it forms the 
basis of the great Persian religion, which has been for 
centuries the religious inspiration of a race allied to our 
.own by community of descent. When, however, men came 



336 PAPAL TRIUIMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [c. 1200 

to apply it to Christianity, and especially to Christianity as 
the outcome of Judaism, they found themselves involved in 
many difficulties. 

We concern ourselves here only with those points upon 
which the Albigensian dualists came into conflict with the 
dominant faith. One of the first consequences 
Duaiistic of the dualistic theory was that the God of the 
rgfumen . Jews, as described in their writings, could never 
have been the good God, but must have been the lesser 
power, used by the greater as a convenient, though uncon- 
scious, agent in the creation of the world. The dualists 
therefore rejected the Old Testament as authority. Another 
consequence was the drawing of a sharp line between the 
spiritual and the material. Whatever was material belonged 
in the domain of the lower deity and was essentially base in 
its character. Man, therefore, in so far as he was a material 
being, was evil and his body was in a condition of hopeless 
conflict with his soul. The only way for the race of man 
to be redeemed was through a gradual process of spirit- 
ualization. Marriage, as tending to increase the mass of 
material men, was in itself an evil. I,t was, however, justi- 
fied, in order that so many more chances might be given for 
the imperfect soul, when it had been freed from one body, 
to reappear in another and still another until it had become 
wholly spiritual and so a candidate for redemption. At any 
given moment the only souls that could be redeemed were 
those of the initiated, the pure and holy souls without sin, 
which formed the select body of the true church. Then 
again the idea that the great God could have come down to 
earth and actually have become a man was beyond all con- 
ception to the dualist. The thing we call Christ was only 
an emanation from the deity and was not at all a man, 
excepting in the mere form. His life on earth was only a 
vision, intended to impress men with the truth of his teaching, 



c. 1200] THE nUAL/ST/C HERESY. 337 

but not essentially the life of a man. Hence followed 
naturally the rejection of the doctrine of the Eucharist, with 
its coarse material idea of the body of Christ actually enter- 
ing the body of the partaker. 

It is not without significance that these ideas found their 

readiest acceptance in a population that was, probably, as 

keenly intelligent as any in Europe. The citizens 

Its Hold q£ ^Yyq o-reat industrial towns of southern France 

upon the ^^ 

Population caught at the teachings of the dualistic mission- 

of Southern ^tj-^gg ^iXid made them the basis of a living protest 
against the hollowness of the priestly life they 
saw about them. They did not proceed to any violence, 
but simply withdrew themselves from the association of the 
dominant religion. Their secular rulers, especially the count 
Raymond VI of Toulouse, finding nothing offensive to the 
public welfare in their doctrines, let them alone or even 
directly protected them from attack. Under these con- 
ditions they increased so rapidly that practically whole 
communities became converted, and the machinery of the 
church found itself for the moment incapable of dealing 
with so obstinate a resistance. 

As regards the character of the dualistic believers, we 
have the evidence of their persecutors, confirming that of 
j^. their own declarations, to the effect that they 

Causes of were generally exceptionally moral and worthy 
ersecution. pgj-sons. There are, to be sure, accounts of 
horrible crimes, such as the eating of children and the most 
unbridled licentiousness at public meetings, but we have to 
recall that these are precisely the charges made against the 
early Christian communities and probably with about as 
much foundation ; that is, there were probably fanatics 
among these sectarians, as there were among the early 
Christians and their excesses may well have given rise to 
reports which were then magnified and applied generally to 



338 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [c. 1205 

their innocent fellows. The real crime of the Albigensian 
was the unpardonable one of non-conformity. To the 
Catholic ideal there can hardly be anything worse than 
the refusal to do things as the established church com- 
mands. Such refusal seems to the Catholic mind to imply 
the possibility of all further horrors. It is to this day a 
popular maxim of Catholicism that heresy, that is diver- 
gence, cannot exist without an element of sinfulness going 
along with it. 

In addition to this all-sufficient religious motive for perse- 
cution there were not wanting others of a more practical 

sort. There was, first, the antagonism of North 
Political . . . 

Causes of the ^.nd South, an opposition which, in spite of all 

Aibig-ensian efforts on the part of the French srovernment, was 
Crusade. . . 

still far from being overcome. The chief feudal 

prince in the South was Raymond of Toulouse, one of the 
leading feudatories of the crown. If he could be brought 
down by a combination of the crown with the papacy, the 
game was worth the candle. If his lands could be brought 
into the hands of more pliant subjects, it would be so much 
gain in the great effort of Philip iVugustus to make himself 
king indeed of all France. The tempting bait of the rich 
lands of Languedoc was enough to secure abundant fighting 
material and the dangers of this domestic crusade were as 
nothing compared with those of an expedition to the East. 
The crusading ardor was at this moment decidedly on the 
wane. The result of the fourth Crusade had been far from 
encouraging to the purely religious interests concerned. It 
had ended in the capture of the friendly and Christian Con- 
stantinople by the crusading army under the lead of the clever 
traders of Venice and in much negotiation, with mutual 
good-will, between the heathen and the Christian leaders. 

The outlook in southern France seemed to offer to the 
ambition of Innocent III the compensation he needed, 



c. 1205] CAUSES OF THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE. 339 

There is probably no doubt "whatever as to the personal 

integrity of his purposes. If it be true that the end justifies 

the means, then the purest souls may employ the 
Attempts at ' ^ . , 

Peaceful vilest methods. Certainly it cannot be said that 

Conversion, innocent resorted to the sword until he had 
exhausted all the resources of peaceful endeavor. Almost 
immediately upon his accession he had sent two legates into 
the infected districts and had called upon the local clergy 
to assist them in converting or in punishing the heretics. 
The response was not encouraging. It became evident that 
the awful principle of toleration had made great progress in 
the land. The local clergy knew too intimately the quality 
of the persons they were called upon to discipline and it 
was clear that a foreign agent would be needed. This point 
is characteristic of the whole history of the persecution. 
Nowhere in Europe, probably, was there a population more 
loyal to itself. A series of foreign, ?>., French monastic 
clergymen, Arnold of Citeaux and Peter of Castelnau the 
most prominent, headed the work of peaceful exhortation. 
The inhabitants made no resistance, were in fact more than 
willing to set their own champions against the strongest 
debaters of the Roman church ; but this process did not 
succeed. The more the method of argument was tried, the 
more the heresy grew. The church then as always after- 
ward declared that this was only another proof of the 
devilish arts by which the souls of men were perverted. 
For nearly ten years the campaign of ideas went on ; then 
a crisis came at the murder of Castelnau, possibly with the 
connivance of count Raymond. 

From that time on there was no hesitation on the part 

ODenineof °^ ^^ pope. All previous efforts to rouse the 

the Crusade, crusading temper had failed. Philip Augustus, 

the overlord of the land, had his hands full in 

the north and the great barons of France were not yet 



340 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1208 

ready to act. The murder of the papal legate seemed to 
break all restraints. Innocent renewed his summons to all 
the faithful in Europe, promising the same immunities from 
spiritual pains that had been offered for the much more 
costly journey to Palestine. The response this time was 
unexpectedly gratifying. Philip of France took no action 
himself, fearing possibly lest the appearance of wanting the 
southern lands for the crown might alienate the loyalty of 
his nearer neighbors ; but he placed no obstacles in the way 
of his barons. Recruits of every description poured in from 
all ove. Europe, individuals and groups drawn together by 
the curiou" v combination of motives usual in all the crusading 
armies. 

Count Raymond, who up to the last moment had treated 
the whole affair with indifference, was now roused to the 
j^ , . utmost, but failed to find support in any direction, 

of Langftiedoc. In despair he threw himself upon the mercy of 
^ • the church and swore to do as she bade him. In 

theory, of course, this removed all occasion for the crusade, 
but political hostility demanded satisfaction. It becu,me 
evident that nothing short of the complete subjugation of 
the South by the soldiers of the North, got together under 
the pretext of a religious war, would suffice. The storm 
broke first upon the southern territory of Beziers a vassal 
state of the king of Aragon. First the capital city and 
then the strong fortress of Carcassonne fell before the 
crusading arms. Then came the vexed question: who 
should be the ruler of the conquered territory? The choice 
of the leaders fell upon a Norman baron, Simon de Mont- 
fort, count of Evreux and through his mother earl of 
Leicester in England. Montfort is the real hero of the 
crusade, a thorough soldier, a man fully believing in his 
cause but ambitious as well for the rewards in the shape of 
landed power, which success might bring. From Beziers as 



I209-] THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE. 341 

a central point, he maintained himself against all odds, and 
before his death nine years later had made himself actually 
sovereign in most of the lands formerly grouped under the 
name of the count of Toulouse. The whole course of 
Raymond VI and of his son Raymond VII is marked by 
hesitation when firmness was needed, by a policy of shifting 
from one party to another as the moment seemed to require, 
and yet by a sincere desire to spare their unhappy country- 
men, so far as they could do it, the horrors of a religious 
war. 

So far as the apparent purpose of the crusade, the puri- 
fying of the land from heretical thought was concerned, 

the papacy might well congratulate itself. It 
the Crusade ^^^ distinctly established the principle that, if 

political allies could be found, divergence from 
its system might successfully be met with the sword. Its 
most important result was the permanent establishment of 
the Holy Tribunal of the Inquisition. The proceedings 
against the heretics of Toulouse had shown how utterly 
useless it was to entrust the pursuit of heresy to the local 
episcopal authority. Not only was the episcopate very 
largely contaminated by worldliness in every form ; it was 
bound up with local interests in too many ways to make it 
a safe instrument of persecution. The next 'recourse had 
been to papal legates, specially created for this purpose, but 
this had only been able to call forth a lukewarm assistance 
from the existing local authorities. The only effective 
method was to create a new tribunal which should be 
composed of men who had no other interests. Such men 
were provided by the new mendicant orders and within a 
few years after the death of Innocent, we find the formal 
recognition by the papacy of the Dominicans as the regular 
organ for the searching out of heresy and its trial. From 
about 1230 on, it is fair to speak of the Inquisition as 



342 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1230 

permanently established, though the natural jealousy of the 
episcopal clergy had to be handled a little carefully for 
some time and was never thoroughly overcome. 

The political result of the crusade was the definite 
breaking-up of the overgrown power of the counts of 

Toulouse, and by this means the incorporation 
French Mon- ^f the south with the crown of France. The 
archyfrom sovereignty of Montfort was a thing of a day. 

The nominal control of the county of Toulouse 
was restored to Raymond VII, but so diminished by the loss 
of portions here and there that it seemed no longer dan- 
gerous. The marriage of the daughter of Raymond with 
a brother of king Louis IX, as a condition of peace, 
brought a Capetian claimant into the question. The couple 
governed Toulouse until 1271, and then, as they died with- 
out children, king Philip III, in pursuance of the terms of 
a treaty, entered into possession. Jn this way the French 
monarchy gained the south of France, and perhaps its 
success there would have been long postponed if the 
religious troubles had not offered it this entering wedge. 
While this enormeus range of activities had been occupy- 
ing the restless energies of Innocent III, he had lopg been 

making plans for a grand general council at 
Lateran Rome, which should seal all his achievements 

Council. with the approval of the assembled church. It 

121S. ... 

had been a point of honor with 'him to brmg to- 
gether as many representatives as possible, not only. of the 
western, but also of the eastern church, in order that this 
assembly might fairly be said to have the " ecumenical " 
character. The result was most gratifying. If we may 
believe the accounts, more than two thousand prelates, en- 
titled to a voice in the council, appeared at Rome in the 
month of November, 12 15, and placed themselves without 
reserve under the leadership of the Roman bishop. It was 



121 s] THE LATER AN COUNCIL. 343 

the proudest moment in the whole history of the papacy. 
The all-important subject was the • precise definition of 
heresy and the determination of the means to get rid of it. 
Several of the most dangerous sectarian doctrines of the 
time were taken up specifically and the policy of the church 
defined in each case. It will be noticed that the council 
did not establish the independent Inquisition, but went as 
far as it could in exhorting bishops to purify their own lands 
from every heretical stain. No person should dare to 
preach without the permission, either of the bishop or of the 
pope. The council recognized the patriarchal dignity of 
the four eastern churches, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch 
and Constantinople, with the right of conferring the pallium 
on their suffragans, but declared that they must petition the 
pope for their own palliums, a barren clause of which no 
resuH: was ever visible. The council recognized the two 
new orders of Dominic and Francis. The great central ob- 
ject of all Innocent's public declarations, the crusade against 
the infidel, was ordered for the ensuing year, place and time 
of gathering prescribed, and all the machinery of the par- 
doning power of the church invoked to whip up the lagging 
enthusiasm of the fighting-men of Eui:ope. 

The Lateran Council represents the culmination of Inno- 
cent's career. He turned himself anew to the reconciling of 
all differences among the powers of Europe, and 
Innocent III. to bringing them all into one vast combined effort 
for the final and permanent recovery of the holy 
places. In the midst of this activity, while at Perugia in the 
summer of 1216, he fell suddenly ill and died. The papacy 
of the future may without exaggeration be described as 
largely his work. 

The years from the Lateran Council of 12 15 to the death 
of Frederic II in 1250, a full generation of men, are filled 
by the continuation of the struggle of Empire and Papacy. 



344 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1216 

At bottom it is the same conflict which had been going on 

since the days of Henry IV, but in its detail it is very 

^ , . „ different and bring^s in side-issues which give 
Frederic 11 ^ , ^^ 

agfainstthe it a quite peculiar character. On the imperial 
Papacy. ^^^^ ^1^^ central figure is the emperor himself, 

young, eager, talented, bold or crafty as occasion required, 
the worst enemy the church had as yet had to meet. So 
long as Innocent III lived, the filial relation in which 
Frederic had stood to the pope had perhaps prevented any 
violent outbreak, and, indeed, Frederic had had quite 
enough to do in getting himself firmly fixed in the imperial 
office. The successor of Innocent was Honorius III, a man 
of far more gentle and pacific nature and yet not inclined to 
give up any of the advantages which Innocent's aggressive 
policy had gained for the church. It was not difficult for 
him to make satisfactory terms with Frederic and to secure 
him the imperial crown at, Rome in the year 1220. The 
emperor on his side gave every assurance of devotion. 

The key-note of Frederic's Italian policy is found in his 
dealings with Lombardy. There, since the Peace of Con- 

„ , . „ stance, the cities had srone on each for itself, 
Frederic II ' . 

andtheLom- developing rapidly the forms of an independent 
bard Cities, democracy which were to give character to the 
political life of the whole peninsula. The control of the 
empire, secured at Constance, had been merely nominal, 
and the cities had got on so well without it that any renewal 
of the tie could only excite their utmost resistance. Frederic, 
however, saw in his Italian sovereignty the central point of % 
his empire and was ready to sacrifice almost everything to 
that. Causes of disagreement were easy to find ; the pre- 
cise rights of the cities and the empire had never been 
positively defined, and things went so far that in 1226 
Frederic was on the point of attempting to force the cities 
into line by means of his Saracen army, which was always 



1227-1241] POLICY OF GREGORY IX. 345 

ready to his hand, the first effective mercenary force of 

modern times. The Lombards replied to this threat by the 

renewal of the old Lombard League, and a collision was 

averted for the moment by the intervention of Honorius III. 

The situation was made more acute in the year following 

by the death of Honorius and the accession of Gregory IX, 

^^ „ ,. ^ a worthy follower of Innocent III. The success 
Tke Policy of •' 

Gregory IX. of Frederic in Lombardy was of all things most 
I227-I24I. dreaded by the papacy, since it implied the com- 
bination of northern with southern Italy in a resistless 
pressure upon the centre. To divert the emperor from this 
attempt there could be no better means than to force him 
into a crusade which would draw off his forces from Italy 
and compel him to make such terms that his sovereignty 
would not be endangered by absence. Frederic had promised 
to go to the Holy Land, but had delayed his departure on 
one and another ground, — pretext the papacy chose to say, — 
until Gregory, very soon after his accession, declared him 
excommunicated. In the correspondence which followed 
this act we have the clearest possible statements of the 
whole issue. True, the letters and proclamations on both 
sides are filled chiefly with a mass of recrimination on lesser 
points of detail, and so far as these go there is little to be 
said, except that one side was as bad as the other. In 
Frederic's letters at 'this crisis, however, we find him rising 
above the pettiness of the moment and declaring in the 
most distinct manner the real issues of the combat. He 
does not hesitate to say that the papacy is the enemy 
of all state power and is aiming at nothing less than its 
annihilation. He warns all the powers of Europe that unless 
they check this assault they will be reduced to absolute 
insignificance. 

The animus of the papacy is best shown by its action 
when Frederic, having for the moment overcome all 



346 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II [1228 

obstacles, set out on the crusade. He did this without mak- 
ing his peace witli the papacy and that was enough. First 

^ , . , anathematized for not goino- he was now doubly 
Frederic's . . . 

Excommuni- anathematized for going. According to the tradi- 

cations. tions of the crusading period the business of 

a crusader was to fight the infidel ; no matter where, or how, 
or at what sacrifice of the real interests of Christendom, 
fight he must. Frederic, on the other hand, was man 
enough to see that fighting was not likely to do more for 
Christianity in the East than it had already done, namely, 
to waste thousands of lives and millions of treasure in fruit- 
less struggle, and so he made a peace, the most advan- 
tageous act for Christian interests that had yet taken 
place in the course of the crusades. Here was another 
cause for papal wrath ; the man who treated with the in- 
fidel must be a sort of infidel himself. So Frederic was 
anathematized for this and was forced to justify himself 
again in the eyes of Europe, by declaring his innocence of 
all infidelity and heresy. Not he, so he declared, but the 
pope was the real heretic in the case. It is interesting to 
see that while Frederic was anxious to free himself from the 
accusations of heresy and to make his peace with the church, 
we hear very little of the kind of superstitious terrors about 
the excommunication which are reported in France and 
in England under similar circumstances. The nature of the 
excommunication as a political weapon seems to have been 
here much more distinctly understood. 

The Peace of San Germano in 1230 marks a resting-place 
in the conflict. Emperor and pope came together, discussed 

matters in person, were profoundly impressed 
Peace of San . . 

Germano and with each other's good intentions and departed 

Frederic's sworn friends. Frederic promised everything 
Legislation. , . , , , . , „ . . . 

and was received back mto the all-iorgivmg 

church. The interval of peace secured by this negotiation 



1230] PEACE OF SAN GERM A NO. 347 

was improved by Frederic to carry out a comprehensive 
scheme of reform in the administration of his inherited 
kingdom of Sicily. For the first time in modern Europe we 
have a system of government resting upon the definite right 
and power of the ruler to govern. The details of this 
reform belong in the history of modern times. Enough for 
our purpose that the distinct and acknowledged purpose of 
them was to break down the rights of all persons, both lay 
and clerical, which interfered with the direct action of the 
king upon the persons and the pockets of his subjects. A 
standing army, a navy, a regularly graded series of royal 
courts, a thoroughly organized hierarchy of royal officials 
throughout the kingdom, a well-defined and general system 
of taxation, whereby all this machinery of government was 
to be paid for ; such are some of the features of this legisla- 
tion which mark it instantly as opposed in every detail to 
the spirit of feudalism. 

The legislation of 1230-31 was confined to Frederic's 
kingdom of Sicily and southern Italy, but it could not fail to 
Frederic n ^^^ct his relation with the empire as well. That 
and Frederic was no such doctrinaire as Otto III is 

ermany. proved by his moderation in dealing with the 
traditions of Germany. The reforms of government in the 
south had been made easier by the familiarity with the 
principles of the Roman Law in those regions ; the chief 
agent of the king in this matter had been his minister, Peter 
of Vinea, one of the most famous Roman jurists of the day. 
All the traditions of Germany, on the other hand, were 
hostile to those ideas of centralization which were reflected 
in the code of Rome. The successes of Frederic in Italy 
had been purchased by constant sacrifices to the spirit of 
independence in Germany, and it is a sign of his political 
wisdom that he did not try to carry out any thorough-going 
measures of centralizing authority there. At the diet of 



348 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1235 

Mainz in 1235 he proclaimed a " Landfrieden," the chief aim 
of which, the securing of public justice, is the same as that 
of the Sicilian constitution, but the means for enforcing it 
were still very far from being ready to his hand. Still, as 
before, he was dependent upon the good-will of the very 
princes over whom the authority was to be exercised, and 
this good-will must be bought by more and ever more con- 
cessions. This Landfrieden of 1235 is remarkable as being 
the first law published in the German language. It is in- 
structive to notice that the date of these efforts to introduce 
into Germany something of the spirit of the Roman Law 
coincides nearly with the production of -those digests of the 
German customary law, the Sachsenspiegel, the Schwaben- 
spiegel and the Spiegel Deutscher Leute. Such digests are 
seldom made excepting under the pressure of conflict with 
another system, and the fact that the papacy felt called upon 
formally to condemn them in Germany shows how much 
their influence was feared and dreaded. 

The harmony of empire and papacy could not last long. 
Lombard troubles broke out anew, not unwelcome to the 
„ emperor, since his new measures of organization 
Cortenuova. both in Germany and Italy had given him new 
1237. resources. This time he took hold of the matter 

in deadly earnest, marched an army made up of Saracens 
and German adventurers into Lombardy and faced the army 
of the allied cities. The League, now as in the days of 
Barbarossa, was ready but not anxious to fight. Their army 
held its ground until a feigned retreat of the emperor's 
forces threw them off their guard, when they broke up 
their camp and started joyfully for home. Then, suddenly 
attacked on all sides by the imperial soldiers, they rallied 
with all their old-time bravery and made a desperate fight, 
but without success. Milan as usual stood the brunt and 
paid the price. Deprived of its defenders, the city surren- 



1237] BATTLE OF CORTENUOVA. 349 

dered at discretion and was spared only upon terms most 
favorable to the conqueror. The effort of Frederic, like 
that of Henry VI, was to raise up against the cities the 
powerful interest of the remaining territorial nobility. The 
chief representative of this class in the north was the 
powerful count Eccelino "da Romano," to whom Frederic 
had given one of his illegitimate daughters in marriage, and 
who now begins the career of despotic cruelty which has made 
him the prototype of the Italian tyrant of the early Renais- 
sance. A natural son of the emperor, Enzio by name, was 
married to a Sardinian princess and given the title of king 
of Sardinia. The princes on the lands of the papacy in 
central Italy were encouraged in every attempt at revolt. 
In short, the whole situation vv^as untenable. It was an 
armed truce and no matter what might be the rights on 
a given point, the real question was whether papacy and 
empire could longer exist on the theory of an imperial con- 
trol in Italy. 

This question was now to be put to the test. In the year 
1239 pope Gregory, driven to desperation by Frederic's 

clever politics, renewed the excommunication, 
st^ ^T f ^^^^^ time releasing his subjects from their 
Frederic n allegiance. Frederic again appealed to the 
^^ ™ judgment of Europe, declaring Gregory to be the 

common enemy of all governments, the promoter 
of heresies and schisms. If there had been any tribunal 
before which such a case could have been brought, the 
legal and moral arguments might have had their effect. As 
it was the question had to be fought out with the weapons 
of ordinary politics. Gregory called upon the clergy of 
all Christendom to come together in council at Rome and 
Frederic determined that this council should never meet. 
A large number of prelates from the north, including three 
cardinals, gathered at Genoa and set sail for Rome ; but 



350 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1240 

Pisa was a good Ghibelline city and the mortal foe of 
Genoa. A Pisan fleet in the emperor's service met the 
Genoese squadron in the open sea, completely defeated 
it in a pitched battle, captured more than a hundred of 
the clersrymen on board and carried them off 

I24I. . 

prisoners to Naples. Rome itself was threatened 
by the emperor and only escaped by a sudden impulse of 
virtue on the part of her citizens. While an imperial army 
was before the city the pope, still the animating spirit of the 
Roman defense, suddenly died. 

The situation of parties was not altered in the slightest 
particular. One pope elected died in a few weeks. The 

cardinals hesitated long in their next choice, but 
o/the^ finally, under pressure from both the emperor and 

Conflict by his enemies, elected a Genoese, whose family had 
I243-I254 ' always been favorable to the empire. Frederic, 

congratulated on this outcome of the election, 
summed up the whole situation in the words "no pope can 
be a Ghibelline." The same mockery of a peace based on 
mutual concessions was gone through with as at the acces- 
sion of Gregory IX, but any hopes based thereon proved 
equally delusive. The appeal to Christendom, attempted 
by Gregory, was carried out by Innocent. He contrived to 
escape from Rome to Genoa and thence passed over into 
France, already so often the refuge of popes in despair, 
and destined to be their asylum for the greater part of 
the following century. At Lyons he summoned a general 

council to consider the affairs of all Christen- 
'^- dom, but especially the troubles with the empire. 
Frederic sent legal representatives who argued his cause 
with all the ingenuity of the new school of legal learning. 
His cause was that of all princes, but they were not yet 
in extreme need and left him to fight it out alone. The 
council supported the pope and declared Frederic deposed 
from the empire. 



1245] INNOCENT IV AGAINST FREDERIC II. 351 

The remaining five years of the emperor's life were 
occupied in desperate attempts to rally to his cause all 
the elements of European p©litics which seemed likely to 
find their interest in opposing papal aggression. Of such 
political elements there were enough, but to unite them in 
effectual opposition was quite another matter. The empire 
had never, in its whole history, commanded anything more 
than a nominal superiority over other European powers and 
now, when these powers were each just becoming acutely 
conscious of its own rights and jealous of any interference 
with them, was a most unfavorable moment for seeking 
alliance against a common enemy. If Frederic's furious 
denunciations of the papacy and his elaborate legal argu- 
ments had any effect upon France and England, it was only 
to make them more careful in guarding their own rights, not 
to draw them into any effective alliance with him. 

The papacy on its side had determined upon the ruin of 
the House of Swabia as the only solution of the problem. 
_. . . . In Germany it favored a conspiracy of the good 
in Germany old sort by which Heinrich Raspe, landgraf of 
an ay. Thuringia, was elected king in opposition to 
Frederic's son, Conrad IV. In Italy it kept up its former 
policy of organizing the opposition of the Guelf territories 
and cities to every act of the emperor. "Guelf" had now 
come to mean simply '^ anti-imperial," no matter whether 
the positive meaning for the moment were "papal," "free- 
municipal " or what not. 

As to Naples and Sicily we see -already, in Innocent's 
turning to France, the foreshadowing of a scheme to oust 
the Hohenstaufen monarchy of the south and to replace it 
by a dynasty which should promise better things for the 
papal rule. The old saying of Liutprand, " The Italians 
always like to have two masters, that they may play one off 
against the other," was fulfilling itself again. 



352 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1250 

Frederic II died as he had lived, unreconciled with the 
church, and leaving to his successors only a heritage of con- 
flict. His son, Conrad IV, was already king of 
T2S0 ^^^ Romans and maintained himself in Germany 

in spite of repeated efforts to set up rival kings 
against him. He also succeeded by right of inheritance to 
the crown of Sicily, though the real soul and centre of the 
Hohenstaufen interest there was Manfred, an illegitimate son 
of Frederic II, the idol of the nation, a brilliant, reckless 
youth, the very kind of man to become the centre of a half- 
legendary tradition which here takes' the place of well- 
authenticated history. Conrad IV got on with Manfred, 
then a very young man, by making him, in fact, though not 
in name, the chief person in the country. Con- 
rad's sudden death in 1254 opened up anew the 
whole question of the succession. The papacy never for a 
moment forgot that the kingdom of Sicily was nominally a 
papal fief, and here was the chance to make its over-lordship 
effective. Innocent IV gathered an army and opened nego- 
tiations with Manfred as to a papal occupation of the king- 
dom. Manfred, on his side, having no legitimate claim to 
sovereignty, was willing to admit the pope in the hope of 
gaining the investiture for himself. Innocent occupied the 
territory but was far from being willing to advance any of 
the " accursed brood " of Swabia to power in Italy. Had 
h'e lived we may be tolerably sure that his policy would have 
hesitated at nothing to secure its end. His death within a 
few months gave heart to the national party. 
Conrad IV had left an infant son, Conrad 
("Corradino" of pathetic memory), and by the rule of inherit- 
ance he was the heir to the Sicilian crown. But the German 
connection had never been popular in the kingdom, and 
Manfred was the very type of hero dear to the southern 
heart. At first regent, he was finally elected king of a 



1254] LAST GERMAN STRUGGLE IN SICILY. 353 

country which he alone had defended and freed from all its 
enemies. 

Manfred became thus the central figure among the Italian 
Ghibellines, who everywhere sought his alliance. His king- 
dom recovered at once from the disorders of 
the previous years and seemed, under the wise 
reforms of Frederic II, to promise a long career of pros- 
perity. Then began to ripen the papal plot with France, 
which from that day until 1870 never ceased to be the curse 
of Italian politics. Pope Urban IV was a Frenchman, and 
upon the failure of negotiations with an English candidate, 
for the Sicilian throne, persuaded king Louis IX to permit 
Fre hPi t ^^^ brother, Charles of Anjou, to accept the 
in Southern attractive proposal. Never was there a more 

^' scandalous abuse of the papal theory. The state 

agains-t which invasion was being preached as a pious deed 
was a peaceful community, living under its own laws, with- 
out even that connection with the empire which had been the 
papal excuse for previous hostilities. Pope Clement IV, 
another Frenchman, pushed the scheme with the utmost 
energy ; the expedition was declared a crusade, so grossly 
perverted had the ideas become which had inspired men in 
the early following of the cross. Not even the excuse of 
heretical depravity, which had seemed to justify the war 
against the Albigensians, could be alleged here. Enmity 
against the papal state was now clearly declared to be a 
crime as foul as enmity against Christianity itself. 

Charles of Anjou, as thorough an adventurer as any who 
ever laid lance in rest, landed at Ostia and entered Rome in 
Charles of the spring of 1265. Here he was made "Sen- 
Anjon ator " of the city, in accordance with a practice 

"^ ^' now common throughout the peninsula of giving 

the executive power of a city to a stranger. Here also he 
received the papal investiture as king of Naples and Sicily. 



354 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1265 

Manfred moved northward into the neighborhood of Bene- 
vento and awaited there the attack of Charles. It was 
nearly a year after his arrival before the French invader 
found himself strong enough to venture upon a battle. 
In the plain of Benevento the issue was fought out and 
Charles' victory was complete. The Hohenstaufen trag- 
edy in Italy wanted but one act to bring it to a close. 
The experience of the papacy with Charles of Anjou was 
the same it had already made and was yet so often to make 
again, that in calling in a servant it had found a master. 
Charles was in deadly earnest ; a rough, unscrupulous 
soldier, checked by no consideration for Italian interests, 
and when he struck a blow putting all his force into it in a 
way quite unfamiliar to Italians. He became the recognized 
head of the Guelf party in the peninsula and went on to act 
as such without regard to the papal wishes. Florence made 
him her Podesta for the extraordinary term of ten years. 

For the moment the Ghibelline party had no one to 

oppose to him, but meanwhile, in the far north, their 

new leader and victim was ripening to his 

1268"^^^°'" P^^^- '^^^ y°^^^S Conrad, son of Conrad IV, 
was now a stripling whom all accounts repre- 
sent as the same ideal of youthful courage and energy as 
was his grandfather Frederic, when, at precisely the same 
age he had gone up into Germany to claim the imperial 
crown. The whole Ghibelline party, united in nothing else, 
joined in a summons to Conrad to come into Italy and to 
put himself at their head. Even Rome, for the moment in 
Ghibelline hands, received him within her walls and gave 
him a substantial force of soldiery. His army was of con- 
siderable strength, and he relied upon the prevailing discon- 
tent in the south to help him still further. Charles of 
Anjou awaited the coming of Conrad near Tagliacozzo in 
Apulia and there on the 23d of August, 1268, occurred the 



1268] . CHARLES OF ANJOU IN SICILY. 355 

fatal battle which decided the fate of the Hohenstaufen 
kingdom forever. It was a desperate struggle and seemed 
already won by Conrad when Charles, who had held a part 
of his forces in reserve, suddenly brought them into action 
and turned the fortune of the day, Conrad and his cousin 
Frederic escaped to Rome, but while trying to get away by 
water were captured and handed over to Charles. Their 
brutal execution at Naples, without a word from the pope 
which might have saved them, ends the drama begun in 
1 194 by the marriage of Henry VI to the Norman heiress 
of Naples and Sicily. In whatever light we may view it, it 
was a foul crime, uncalled for by any political necessity and 
unjustified by any usage of mediaeval warfare. 

The murder of Corradino was the triumph of the papacy 
over the empire. From this time on the empire becomes a 
totally different institution. It never again, as such, makes 
any effective claim to sovereignty in Italy. Since the death 
of Frederic II it had been of so little account in Germany 
that although there was a series of persons called kings of 
the Romans, the period from 1250 to the election of Rudolf 
of Habsburg in 1273 has come to be known as the Inter- 
regnum. Yet none the less certainly did the same events 
proclaim that the papacy too, in its mediaeval form, was 
doomed. One generation more and the same nation which 
had sent an army to defend its cause in Italy was to strike 
it in the face with the iron glove of one of its own subjects, 
and was then to capture it and hold it, an ignominious tool 
for political ends, during nearly a century more. 

In short here is the proper end of mediaeval political 
history. With the last quarter of the thirteenth century we 
find everywhere in Europe certain indications that the ideals 
of the past are being replaced by those of the future. In 
England the year 1268 marks the definite beginning of the 
House of Commons as a permanent political force. In 



356 PAPAL TRIUMPH OVER FREDERIC II. [1268 

Germany the Habsbiirg empire, deliberately giving up all 
Italian ambitions, becomes national in its aims and recog- 
nizes its federative character. In France the kingdom of 
Philip IV deals with all the territory of the realm as with a 
royal possession and goes with light heart into a mortal 
combat with the papacy, contented with the support of its 
subjects and laughing at the papal excommunication. So 
in Italy the ruin of the empire is far from being the accept- 
ance of the papacy as the arbiter of Italian destinies. The 
names Guelf and Ghibelline cease to have more than an 
occasional reference to the issue of Church 7-.^. Empire and 
designate merely political parties divided on the local issues 
of the hour. 

Within this quarter of a century we have in the two 
typical republics of Florence and Venice the final establish- 
ment of forms of government destined to be permanent. 
In Florence the "Ordinances of Justice" of the year 1294, 
place the power of the state in the hands of the great indus- 
trial classes; in Venice the "Closing of the Golden Book" 
in the year 1297 fixes the power in that aristocracy which had 
conquered an empire and made itself master of the com- 
merce of the East. In neither case is there any room for an 
imperial over-sovereignty like that for which the mediaeval 
heroes of the House of Swabia had wasted their resources 
for more than a century. 




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CHAPTER XL 

THE CRUSADES. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Recueil des Historiens des Croisades; pub. by French Academy. 1841- 

1886. Including the Assises of Jerusalem. 2 vols., fol. 
Albertus Ac^uensis. Historia Hierosolymitanae Expeditionis in 

Migne, Patrologia, cxlvi. Tr. in Guizot, Collect, des Memoires, xx, 

xxi. 
Chronicles of the Crusades, — contemporary accounts. 1S48. Bohn's 

Lib. 
GuiBER'r DE NoGENT. Gestci dei per Francos, in Migne, clvi. 

Transl. in Guizot, Memoires, xiv. 
William of Tyre. Historia Rerjtni in Partibns Transmarinis, etc., 

in Recueil, etc., and transl. in Guizot, Memoires. 
JoiNViLLE, Jean, Sire de. Histoire de S. Louis. Text and Fr. 

translation. 1874. Eng. transl. by James Hutton. 1868. 
Extraits de la Chronique de Joinville ; with introduction and glossary. 

1S87. 
Paris, G. & Jeanroy, A. Extraits . . de Villehardouin, Joinville, 

F>oissart, Commines. 1892. 
Ralph of Coggeshalle. Chro7iicon Anglicanuni, etc.; in Rolls 

Series, Ixvi. 1875. 
De passagiis in Terram Sanctam, — facsimile of original Manuscript. 

1879. ed. G. M. Thomas. 
Archer, T. A. ed. The Crusade of Richard I. 1189-92. Extracts 

from original sources. 1888. 

MODERN WORKS. 

Mombert, J. I. A short History of the Crusades. 1894. 

Kugler, Bernhard. Geschichte der Kreuzzuge. 1880. 

Mtchaud, J. History of the Crusades. 3 vols. N. Y. 1853. To 
be used with caution. 



358 THE CRUSADES. [i 097-1 270 

Cox G. W. The Crusades. (Epoch series.) 7 ed. 1887. 

Sybel, H. V. Geschichte des ersten Kreuzzugs. 2 ed. 1881. Also 

Essays in his Kleine historische Schriften. 1869. 
Pears Edwin. The Fall of Constantinople, 1202-4- i8«6. 
ROHRICHT, Reinhold. Studien zur Geschichte des Funften kreuz- 

zugs. 1 89 1. 
Gray, G. Z. The Children's Crusade. 1870. 
ProceL des Templiers. ed. Michelet. 2 vols. 1841-51- 
ScHOTTMiJLLER, K. Der Untergang des Templer-Ordens. 1887. 

With a mass of documentary material in defense of the order. 
Prutz Hans. Entwickelung und Untergang des Tempelnerrnordens. | 

1888 A reply to Schottmiiller, proving guilt of the order. 
Gmelin, J. Schuld Oder Unschuld des Tempelordens. 1893- Ihe 

best resume of the question. ^ 

Perlbach, M. Die Statuten des Deutschen Ordens 1890. 4 - 
Porter, W. A History of the Knights of Malta. New ed. 1883. 
Salles, F. de. Annales de I'ordre de Malte, etc. 1889. ^ 

Prutz, 'h. Kulturgeschichte der Kreuzziige. 1883. 
Heeren, a. H. L. Essai sur I'lnfluence des Croisades. iSob. 
Prize of Fr. Academy. ^^Stctc 

Oman, C. W. C. The Art of War in the Middle Ages, 378-1515- 

1885. 

The whole period from iioo to 1300 is often known as 
the period of the crusades, and it has become ahnost a 
habit of historians to speak of the crusades as 
The Period of -f they were the all-sufficient explanation of most 
tue crusades. ^^ ^^^^ phenomena of European society in this 
very complicated period. It will be our purpose rather to 
rep-ard them as one of these phenomena, one of the most 
natural consequences of the ideas and institutions which we 
are studying in other connections. There has grown up, 
also, a traditional way of describing them by numbers 
which has led us to overlook the fact that for two hundred 
years the crusade was always going on. Now and agam 
a more than usually strong impulse set special troops of 
armed men in motion towards the Holy Land, but between 
these more impressive demonstrations of the crusadmg 



1097-1270] THE PERIOD OF THE CRUSADES. 359 

spirit there was a continuous ebb and flow of European 
enthusiasm and courage to and from the East. There was 
always work to do there, and individuals or small parties 
could always find occupation for their superfluous energy, 
and a chance of reward for the expenditure of their 
resources. 

For our purpose we shall make use of six of the most 

striking outbreaks of the crusading zeal, and shall group 

around these such other incidents as seem best 

The Crusades ^^ illustrate them. The first will be the early 
by Number. ■'^ 

preaching of the Crusade and the half-experi- 
mental enterprises which resulted in the capture of 
Jerusalem, and the establishment there of a kingdom 
intended to be permanent. The second is the great upris- 
ing of Europe, as the permanence of this kingdom is 
threatened, and as the conviction gains ground that the way 
to maintain it is to carry out enough European soldiers to 
defend the great centres of life in the whole region included 
under the somewhat fantastic idea of the Latin Orient. 
The third is the romantic combination of Richard of Eng- 
land with his bitterest foe, Philip Augustus of France, and 
the Archduke Leopold of Austria, brought about by the 
thrilling news that Jerusalem itself had again fallen into the 
hands of the enemy under the greatest of Moslem leaders, 
the famous Saladdin. The fourth is the expedition of the 
Venetians, which resulted not in victories over the infidel, 
but in the capture of the friendly capital of Constantinople, 
and the conversion for a time of the Byzantine empire into 
an empire of the Latin race. The fifth is the series of 
adventures which centre about the personality of Frederic II ; 
and, finally, the sixth is the last desperate attempt of king 
Louis IX of France to rouse once more the old enthusiasm 
for an ideal which had ceased to animate the most active 
elements of the European population. 



360 THE CRUSADES. [1097-1270 

The idea of a combined effort of the Christian world to 
secure the holy places of Jerusalem, and to hold them as 
The Earliest ^^^^ common property of Christendom, goes back 
Impulse to at least as far as to Gerbert, the pope Sylves- 
rusa es. ^^^ jj ^g^cj_ioo2). His fertile fancy had been 
kindled by the thought of these sacred spots in the hand 
of the intidel, and, as the mouthpiece of the mourning- 
city, he had written a letter to the princes of Europe.^ The 
fact was, however, that there was not, as yet, sufficient 
cause for mourning. The Mohammedan conquerors who 
held Syria were the early Arab peoples, to whom Chris- 
tianity was too nearly related by its character and its half- 
Semitic traditions to excite their very bitter hostility. The 
real impulse came when these Semitic Mohammedans were 
in their turn conquered by the Seldschukian Turks, who, 
in the latter part of the eleventh century, came streaming 
into western Asia from the regions north of China, just as 
their predecessors and relatives, the Huns, had done in the 
fourth and fifth centuries. These Turks were, it is true, 
converted to Mohammedanism, but they wholly lacked 
those bonds of common racial and religious tradition which 
had brought Christians and Arabs near each other. The 
sacred places of the ancient Jewish religion had no meaning 
for them, and the streams of Christians pouring all the time 
along the roads from the north and the west could only 
seem to these newly converted zealots like so many natural 
victims of their own foolhardiness. 

The emperor of the East, threatened in his own capital 
by these terrible warriors, who had beaten him in open fight 
din '^^ Manzikert in Armenia (1071), turned for help 
Efforts of to the only visible power whence help could be 
Gregory . expected, to the Roman papacy. Gregory VII, 
always on the alert for his own advantage, believed that he 

1 See p. 158. 



1097] THE FIRST C'^SADE. 3^.;, 

The other aspect, the military and p<j;it.ica], began almost 
at once to make itself visible. The response to the sum- 
mons at Clermont came chiefly from the highest 
Aspect^f chivalry of France and of that Norman Italy 
the First which was also French in its blood and training. 
crusade. ^^^^^^^ ^^ Vermandois, brother of king Philip T, 

Robert of Normandy, brother of king William II of Eng- 
land, Stephen of Blois, Robert of Flanders, Raymond of 
Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon, duke of Lorraine, were 
the central figures of the French chivalry. Boemund, son 
of Robert Guiscard, the Norman adventurer, and his nephew 
Tancred led the contingent of southern Italy. Central 
leadership in this vast and far-reaching enterprise there was 
none. Every feudal baron was an independent adventurer, 
with as many followers as he could get, and the only prin- 
ciple of union was the voluntary subordination of the lesser 
under the greater for purely practical purposes, a subordina- 
tion which shifted as chance or profit might dictate. The 
various troops made their way to the East as best they 
might, all converging upon Constantinople. Nor was there 
anything like a settled policy, by which the motion of this 
tremendous warlike machine could be determined. The 
very first problem was how to get on with the power which 
after all had called the movement into being and which had 
the most direct personal interest in the result. The emperor 
of Constantinople at the time, Alexius Comnenus, was a very 
clever politician. He needed the crusaders to help him 
drive back the Turk from before the very gates of his 
capital, but he was too clever not to foresee that their first 
inquiry after the hoped-for victory would be, " To whom 
belong the spoils ? " Furthermore, desperate as his strait 
was, he was at an advantage as compared with these hordes 
of fighting-men, far from their homes, absolutely dependent 
upon him for bread to eat and counting upon his assistance 
in the desperate struggle before them„ 



36^ THE CRUSADES. [1097 

Doubtless the most important question for Alexius was 

the recovery of Asia Minor, but he could not forget that 

Syria too had once belono^ed to the empire and. 
Relations of ./ , , . , . . , 

tlie Crusaders 11 recovered, ought, m the miperial theory, to 

with Alexius come back again into his hands. If the crusad- 
Comnenus. 

ing leaders had any theory about it, it certainly 

was not this. So far as the great religious object was 

concerned they were united ; but beyond that it was every 

man for himself. Instead of making with the crusaders as 

a body some provisions for the disposal of the lands to be 

conquered, the crafty Alexius turned upon them individually 

the convenient principles of their own feudalism and secured 

from each of them in turn an oath of vassalage, before he 

would consent to further their passage into Syria. Whatever 

else the crusaders may have been, they were not clever. 

Their first military achievement was the capture of the very 

strong fortress of Nicea, the key to Constantinople on the 

east. Alexius had helped very little in the siege, but 

contrived to slip a garrison into the place just before it was 

surrendered and then shut the gates upon the crusaders, 

inviting them to pass on. 

In the long and perilous march through Asia Minor the 

emperor gave little or no assistance, but took advantage 

„ , 4. of some victories of the crusaders to re2:ain 
Capture of ^ 

Antioch. possession of pretty nearly the whole peninsula. 

June, . ^\^Q terrible passage of the Tarsus mountains 
brought the army out into the plain of northern Syria and 
along near the coast to the Syrian capital Antioch, The 
capture of this, the key to the whole of Syria, delayed the 
crusaders a full year. It was an adventure of the good 
mediaeval type, a siege with all the apparatus of machinery 
known to the age, a capture by storm and then a long and 
weary defense against swarms of assailants, which were 
renewed as fast as they were reduced by sallies of the 



c. 10S5] EARLY CRUSADING MOVEMENTS. -361 

might thus open the way for a complete subjugation of the 
eastern church to the papal control, and actually went so 
far as to gather an army and make ready to put himself at 
the head of the undertaking, when he was called off by the 
pressure of the German troubles. The plan fell through, 
but the impulse was not lost. Just in proportion as the 
growing power of the papacy gave to Europe a sense of 
common interest, so the minds of men were made ready for 
the preaching of the crusade. The revival of active meas- 
ures began with the papacy of Urban II, a Frenchman by 
birth, the heir of all the successes of Gregory VII, and 
filled, as he had been, with the profoundest sense of the 
papal mission. Renewed entreaties from Constantinople 
gave opportunity for a general appeal to western Christen- 
dom ; and at Piacenza, in the spring of 1095, Urban held 
his first great general council, and there, with immense 
applause from the assembled thousands, proclaimed for the 
first time the duty and the glory of the crusade. Passing 
over into France, in the region where the great religious 
movement of the time found its centre and its most yigorous 
nourishment, he held another great assembly at Clermont 
in Auvergne. There, after a fiery speech from the pope, in 
which he held up to his hearers the miseries of the holy 
places, and the duty of Christendom to lend a hand in their 
defense, a storm of enthusiasm seemed to carry away the 
vast multitude of laymen and clergymen, and, as if by an 
impulse quite independent of the papal leading, there broke 
forth the passionate cry, ''It is the will of God," which was 
the key-note of the nobler aspect of the whole crusading 
time. Up to that moment the leadership had been in the 
hands of the papacy, and the call had been to defend the 
emperor of Constantinople from the pressure of the Turk, 
and so, secondarily, to make Palestine accessible to the 
devotion of the West. 



362 THE CRUSADES. [1095 

Henceforth, during all the early period of the crusades, 
the moving impulse was to act just in the reverse order. 
Motives '^^^ primary thought was the recovery of Pales- 

of the First tine, and the interests of the eastern empire fell 
rusa e. distinctly into the background. This aspect of 

the case was vastly strengthened by the impassioned preach- 
ing of the monk Peter of Amiens, not the originator of the 
crusade, as later legend has made him, but doubtless a 
potent force in bringing the crusading spirit to the white 
heat of action. Under this impulse we see at the side of 
the papal and aristocratic effort a vast popular enthusiasm 
seizing upon masses of peasantry and citizens""^ over 
Europe, and leading them in great undisciplined streams of 
humanity towards the East. This was the purest, but at 
the same time the saddest phase of the whole period. Of 
course such a demonstration could have but one result. 
On the long and terrible march through the Danube valley, 
through a country. Christian, it is true, but not on that 
account the more willing to be plundered of its resources, 
thousands of these aimless wanderers perished by the way, 
or dropped out of the ranks, only to be drifted off, nobody 
knew where, into permanent misery. The masses which 
arrived at Constantinople without intelligent direction, and 
with no reasonable plans of operation, fell easy victims to 
the attacks of their disciplined enemies, or to the neglect of 
their still more dangerous allies. This first phase of the 
crusades can be thought of only as one of those madnesses 
which, oftener in the Middle Ages than at other times, 
seized upon whole communities and swept them on to deeds 
of reckless courage or fanatic self-immolation. It served, 
as such extremes always do, to put before the minds of 
men the heroic side of their undertaking, and to offer 
standards which others might strive, though afar off, to 
maintain. 



1098] POLICY OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 365 

defenders. The issue was finally decided by an exploit of 
the Norman Boemund, who led out the whole disheartened 
and weakened army of the Christians against a countless 
host of Moslem, led by their greatest chieftain. The 
victory of the Christians was decisive, not only for the 
fate of Antioch, but as a proof that their superior military 
skill would give them the advantage over a much larger 
army of the infidel, if only they could have the fortune of 
a fair fight in open field. Now came the question, what 
to do with Antioch ? Were the princes who had rescued it 
to hand it over to the sly Alexius who had done nothing 
in its service ? The answer could not be doubtful ; Antioch 
remained in the hands of the crusaders and Boemund, by the 
right of superior force, maintained himself as its governor, 
while Raymond of Toulouse, already his bitter rival, moved 
on southward with the main army toward Jerusalem. 

The capture of the Holy City was far less difiicult than 
that of Antioch. In the midsummer of 1099, after a short 
Ca t f ^^^ sharp conflict, the Christian army found 
Jerusalem. itself at the goal of its struggles. Jerusalem was 
a Christian city ; but now again rose the ques- 
tion of its future. Was it to become once more a provincial 
capital of the Roman empire, — was it to be the spoil of 
some crusading prince, — was it to be treated as the property 
of the whole army together, or finally was it to be placed 
beyond the reach of political disturbance by making it a 
purely spiritual state .? All these alternatives were before the 
princes. As to surrender to the empire, that seemed beyond 
all possibility. In the first moment of lofty exultation over 
their victory, personal rivalries were for the moment silent 
and it was felt that the decision must rest with the whole 
body of the princes. There remained the question of lay 
or clerical control. The clerical party found a leader in the 
ambitious Dagobert, bishop of Pisa, who demanded recog- 



. 366 THE CRUSADES. [1099 

nitioii as Patriarch of Jerusalem with sovereign rights over 

the new state. After long and troublous negotiations the 

first part of his demand was granted, and he was accepted 

as spiritual head of the land ; but at his side was to be a 

temporal prince, on whom the responsibility of defense 

must rest. It was determined to organize a government on 

the only model known to the princes, namely the feudal, and 

the kingship, offered to several leaders, was finally accepted 

by Godfrey of Bouillon. 

Tradition has ascribed to Godfrey the origin of all the 

later institutions of this custom-made kingdom. In fact he 

reigned but a short year, was never crowned 
Orgfanization , . , , , ^^ ^ • -^r , ^ r ^ 

of the King- ^nig, choosmg rather to call himself " Defender 

domof Jeru- of the Holy Sepulchre," and found himself fully 

occupied m defending his land from a furious 

assault from the south. The 2:reat battle of Ascalon 

^^delivered Syria for a long time to come from the terror 

of the Esfyptian Moslem. It remained for the 

Augf. 12, 1099. . , . , 

conquerors so to organize their conquest that 
its permanence and its strength should be secured. To this 
end the very first requisite was a strongly centralized control 
of the military forces and of the financial income of the 
country. Only in this way could the diversities of race and 
the selfish ambitions of the individual leaders be overcome 
and the whole strength of the newcomers be turned to the 
defense of the land and its development into a peaceful and 
prosperous Christian state. In fact the very opposite of 
all this happened. The whole spirit of European life was 
opposed to strong centralization and, of course, the crusaders 
carried with them to the East the same ideas of politics and 
social organization that they had had in their homes. From 
the very first moment the success of the expedition had 
been delayed and endangered by the furious jealousies of 
the leaders and their followers. These jealousies were 



1099] THE KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM. 367 

partly national, but far more individual. Each prince 
aimed primarily to get the most for himself that he could, 
and only secondarily to advance the general cause. Like 
all other mediaeval enterprises the crusade was a series of 
personal feats of arms carried out at enormous expenditure 
of men and money and bringing results small out of all 
proportion to the outlay. 

After the conquest of Jerusalem the settlement of the 
conquered lands was dictated by just the same narrow and 
shortsighted policy. We hear most often of a 
FourPrin- kingdom of Jerusalem, but this was only the 
cipalities. chief in honor in a group of four quite inde- 
pendent principalities. Its limits were the Jordan on the 
east, the sea on the west, the neighborhood of Beyrout on 
the north, and on the south a line varying from about 
Ascalon to the point of the Red Sea. Adjoining the king- 
dom of Jerusalem on the north was the county of Tripolis, 
north of that the principality of Antioch, which at times 
included a great part of Cilicia but rerTlarned limited gener- 
ally to a narrow strip between the sea on the west and 
the Orontes and the mountains of Lebanon on the east. 
To the northeast lay the county of Edessa, the stronghold 
of the Christian communities of Armenia, reaching out at 
first as far as the Tigris but lost to Christianity after fifty 
years of perilous existence. 

The first effect of the conquest was to release a great 

part of the Christian army from the obligations into which 

they had entered when they assumed the cross. 
The r^J • 

Immigration The notion of feudal service was always based 

from tlie on the idea of a limited time ; the enterprise 
West. . ^ 

was over and the crusader might now go home 

without any sense of violated pledges. The fortunes of the 

new states were left in the hands of a few princes, who saw 

here an opportunity for getting power and wealth under the 



368 THE CRUSADES. [c. iioo 

attractive pretext of the service of religion. For the moment 
these were states without a population. The lands along 
the rivers and the sea were of immense fertility, but under 
the mad policy of a religious war their former inhabitants 
had been almost entirely driven out or murdered. To kill 
an infidel was a service to God. The accounts of the first 
years after the capture of Jerusalem represent the guardians 
of the holy places as in the deepest despair, inclined even 
to give up the whole thing and go back to their homes. 
Meanwhile, however, the reaction of the conquest was mak- 
ing itself felt in Europe. Exaggerated stories of the wealth 
and attractiveness of the East began to be spread and soon 
a steady stream of pilgrims set in along the routes now made 
safe even for comparatively undefended companies. This 
became especially true of the sea-routes from Genoa, Pisa 
and above all from Venice. The clever traders of these 
cities began to see their profit in forwarding these masses of 
eager travelers and soon developed a regular system of 
transportation in vessels specially built for the purpose, 
capable, if we may believe the contemporary accounts, of 
carrying as many as fifteen hundred persons. Twice in the 
year — in early spring and again in August or September — 
a regular migration of pilgrims took place. Such an expe- 
dition was known as a passagiuvi, and we have preserved 
at Venice a very curious record called '•'-De passagiis i?i ter- 
rain sanctcifn,'' from which much of our knowledge of these 
voyages is derived. The theory of these trips was that they 
were pilgrimages, undertaken primarily with a religious pur- 
pose, but, remembering how little connection there has 
often been between the impulse of sincere religious enthusi- 
asm and a decent life, it will not surprise us that the mem- 
bers of these companies were anything but select persons 
and that their undertakings were in many ways a scandal to 
Christendom, 



r 1 00-1150] IMlMIGKATTON FN OAT THK WEST. 

Our most instructive point of view is to regard them ratn 
IS emigrations than as pilgrimages. The eastern lane 
rrradual ^^^"^^ rapidly becoming colonies, and it \\;is ti: 

Settlement interest of their rulers to attract settlers wl: 

would give promise of becoming useful not 
merely in the defense but also in the development of the 
country. Along these Hues a certain success was attained. 
The population did slowly increase ; the natural fertility of 
the soil rewarded even the rudc-^ attempts at agriculture , 
the native populations, after the m.^.t rage of Christian zeal 
was over, wandered back more or ic..« into their former 
places and were tolerated with that indifference which comes 
with the ■ sense of strength and with greater familiaritv. 
Henceforth the history of the crusading times follows two 
ahnost entirely distinct channels, according as we are con- 
'cerned with the zeal for conquest of those who went out 
from Europe to do the fighting and come back, or with 
those who, remaining in the country, had all the labors and 
responsibilities of a continuous defensive and of administer- 
ing the affairs of the new-born states. 

As to the form of government to be adopted there could 
no more question about that than there would be to-day 
criental ^^ citizens of the United States should found an 

FeudaUsm an independent settlement in a perfectly new coun- 
try. The feudal principle had by this time come 
to be thoroughly rooted in the European consciousness, and 
precisely for such an undertaking as this its elasticity and 
its adaptability to new relations of individuals to a state 
made it a most useful instrument. Its fundamental weak- 
ness — the lack of a sufficient tie between the centre and 
the members — of course made itself felt here as elsewhere. 
It»is a singular fact that we have some of the clearest 
documentary evidence about it in two countries far remove^ 
frim each other, a^4 both lying outside the group of statds 



v.hu.li it WIS most at home. The E\i^land of William th 
Conqueror and the kingdom of Jerusalem durin: 
tth the first half of the twelfth century are illustn 

igland. tions of the working of feudalism, not as 
.growth but as a complete system, deliberately imposed upo 
the land, with full consciousness of its meaning and i 
dangers. Where, as in the European countries of the co 
tinent, feudalism had been a natural growth, produced 1, 
econoxiiic and military necessity o,u.t*'-of already existLi 
conditions, there went on, from stage to stage, : a ru( 
adjustment of its opposing tendencies to the immedia 
pressure of politics. In these two remote applicatio 
of it there was in each case an empliasis laid upon th 
side of it which seemed most likely to work to the adv? 
v^g'(' of its framers. England was conquered by a power 
' >rritorial prince, with a tradition of allegiance behind h' 
and a band of followers already bound to him by ties 
personal fidelity and having all to expect from his perso' 
favor. Jerusalem was conquered by a disorganized grO' 
of individual leaders of different nationality and each \^ 
his fortune to make by his own cleverness ; they agreed uj 
the choice of one of their number as king, but it was tl.' 
who made him, not he who would make them. Hence. 
England, we find the feudal system applied with all possi! 
emphasis upon the obligations of the subjects to the ^ 
and his rights over them. In Jerusalem we find the ; 
system stretched as far as possible the other wa), su j 
as to secure to the princes the greatest possible freedom 
and to cut down the prerogatives of the king to the low' 
point. 

' Later tradition has ascribed to the heroic and uncrc 
l\ing Godfrey of Bouillon, the publication of the w 
iode in which the feudalism of the east has come 
to us. Present scholarship, however, places the ^Mnv ■ 



1100-1150] ORIENTAL FEUDALISM. 37 i 

putting into shape of this work at least a half century later 

than Godfrey's time. It is known as the "Assizes of Jen 

salem," i.e., a sjuide to the courts of law (assises^\ 
The ' ' o \ / 

Assizes of which had the settlement of disputed cases 
Jerusalem. ^^ property and the care of public order. If 
ever the definition of feudalism as "organized anarchy'' 
was true, it is so here. Weakness in the defense of the 
border, wastefulness in the use of the public resources, 
contempt for the great middle farming and trading classes 
which must form the backbone of any successful state, were 
all legally secured to the unhappy kingdom by this writteii 
code. 

The wonder is that the Syrian states could have lasted a - 

long as they did. This duration can partly be accounted 

for by the wholesome fear of the Christian arms 

Duration of which resultecl from their first successes. Almost 

the Syrian always when the Christian and Mohammedan 
states. 

forces came to a fair fight in the open field, the 

Christians, or, as we may now call them by their usual 
eastern name "Franks," proved equal to far greater num- 
bers of their more active, but lighter-armed enemies. In the 
art of besieging and defending cities they were beyond ah 
comparison superior. Their strong hold ujpon tKe country 
lay in the fortified places near the seacoast and in the too 
few outposts which they had been able to defend along 
their eastern border. It doubtless helped to secure the 
Christians along the coast, that the lands they held there 
had no especial value to the Turks, beyond their natural 
advantages as places of commercial importance, whereas to 
the Franks it was not so much land, but precisely these lands 
and no others that they prized. But undoubtedly the great 
resource was the constant supply of new fi/ghting material 
poured in from thV^^est. Whatever other motive might 
animate the wanderer of the cross, a fi^iit with the infid?' 



/ 



v/as always attractive. Aoi can wc* omit to ir»entio]i 
gradual growth of an organized body of professional de- 
fenders of the holy places, whose sworn obligation it was 
lo stay in the country and devote their lives to this service. 
In the interval between the first and the second crusade, 

ve find the beginnings of the three great military orders, 

the most sino-ular combination of the dominant 

Military ideas of the Middle Ages that we shall meet 

^ ^^^' anywhere. The monastic idea, excluding the 

rery thought of fighting and the knightly theory, totally 
opposed to monastic seclusion, were here combined into a 
most effective machine. The origin of the Knights of St. 
John or of the Hospital was found in the necessity of 
providing effective hospital service for the great numbers 
of wounded soldiers and sick pilgrims whom the peculiar 
conditions of the country were always bringing down along 
the routes of travel. Such care included the idea of defense, 
and thus out of a body of nurses grew a society of armed 
men. Vows followed as a matter of course. Property was 
acquired as a means of supplying the pressing necessities 
of their work. Before very long lands and houses of the 
Hospital were to be found scattered about in all the western 
countries, and the organization had grown to rival the exist- 
ing monastic orders and came even to equal the popularity 
of the mendicants of the thirteenth century. More secular 
in its origin was the Order of the Temple, so called from 
the quarters in the enclosure of the old temple at Jerusalem 
granted them by the king as their first abiding-place. Their 
mission was strictly one of defense, to provide for the safe 
passage of the pilgrims coming southward and eastward and 
then to give their services in the border warfare continually 
going on. The Teutonic Order began with the hospitality 
of a German merchant in Jerusalem towards those of his 
own countrymen 'who might need help while in the East. 



\ 



1 00-1150] THE MILITARY ORDERS. _ .'jT.f 

t was thus in its beginnings a national affair, but -ijoo 
lutgrew those limits and came to be, like the Order of the 
Temple, a purely military body with the primary duty of 
lefending the sacred soil. During the heroic period of the 

(Jrusades these military orders were the chief reliance of 
be new states. Their continuous residence in the country 
nade them familiar with the methods of warfare needed 

ander the given conditions, but it familiarized them also 
nore than any other persons with the qualities, good as well 

cis bad, of the enemies they were sworn to fight. It gave 
hem a kind of charity for the infidel, far from consistent 

with the original crusading hatred, and it is along this lin^ 

that the later degeneracy, especially of the Order r ■ the 

Temple, is to be traced. 

Their history is in many ways the counterpart of tl^at of 

the monastic bodies. Their exile in Syria c ^-responded to 

the seclusion of tue monk in his cloister ; tPieir 
Decline and . . 

Fall of the acquirement of lands m the European countries 

"imtary ^^g parallel to the growth in landed property of 
the monastic houses and their gradual neglect 
c the function for which they were called into being is 
pf icisely typified by the growing worldliness of one after 
another of the revived ascetic bodies. At the close . '" the 
crusading period the Teutonic Order concentrated itself hi 
the country lying just eastward from the lower course of the 
Vistula, where the flourishing cities of Elbing, Thorn and 
Konigsberg testified to its excellent quality as a landed 
proprietor. The Order of the Temple, living in it- rich 
houses all over the western world, became the objecr 
more or less just suspicion of moral and religious corruptxOfj 
and offered a tempting prey to ambitious monarchs to con- 
fiscate its wealth while prosecuting its sins. The example 
was set by king Philip IV of France, supported by a papacy 
which he had created, and the end was the total extinction 



V 

\ 

'^Z' . TI/£ CRUSADES. [1100-1150 

of the Temple in France and so serious a blow to its repii- 

ta/tion elsewhere that it allowed itself gradually to become 

incorporated with other similar organizations in the different 

■. ?uiitries. Its property, so much as escaped the coniisc.-i 

vion of kings, was awarded by papal decree to the Order of 

Sl\ ' .>hn. This latter, the earliest of the military orders, 

Avas also the last to disappear. It had taken the same 

course as the rest, and had even gone to the point of setting 

jip a regular state of its own in vassalage to the principality 

of Antioch. After the evacuation of Syria in the early years 

of the fourteenth century, it was transferred to the island of 

Ivhodes, and after the capture of that place by the Turks in 

the sixteenth century, again to Malta. It still lingers without 

property as an honorary title in many European countries. 

All these phases of the war in Syria developed themselves 

during the fifty years' interval between the first and second 

_. „ . crusades. The situation seemed to have become 
Tne Second 

CrusadeL permanent, when Europe was suddenly startled 

S., Bernard. ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ comparative indifference by the news 
that Edessa, the outpost of Christianity towards the north- 

lad fallen into the hands of the Turks (December. 
1, i44). The Europe which received this shock was a ven 
different one from that which had answered the call 01 
Urban II. In the interval, if the papacy had lost some 
thine' of the vigor of its earlier administration, it was be- 

the same ends were being more effectively reached 
by other agencies. It was the time of St. Bernard, the time 
wbeji the revived ascetic spirit was winning" its greatest 
triumphs. It was absolutely controlling the papacy ; it was 
fighting, in the persons of Abelard and Arnold of Brescia, 
the dangerous growth of heretical and popular tendencies .; 
it was moulding the scientific thought of the day into a 
system which was to justify its actions, and it was holding 
up ti the leaders of the European states the theory of 



IIOO-II44] I^'ALL OF EDESSA.— SECOND CRUSADE. 375 

sacrifice to religious ends as the highest ideal of the public 

service. All these tendencies of twelfth century society 

responded with great swiftness to the appeal of the Holy 

Land. Bernard himself was the Peter of this crusade. He 

directed his impassioned eloquence to the kings of the earth, 

and with such success that the chief among them declared 

themselves ready to take the cross in person. 

Louis Vn of France made himself from the first the 

central point in the gathering of his countrymen ; Conrad II 

of Germany, less enthusiastic, let himself be per- 
Movement •' 

of the suaded, and with this mighty impulse the lesser 

Armies. barons of both countries needed no persuasion. 

Two great armies of well-equipped soldiers, burdened un- 
happily with a mass of useless followers, were ready for the 
march in the summer of 1147. The Germans moved first 
dov.'n the Danube to Constantinople and made their own 
arrangements with the emperor Manuel, whose interest was 
to get them on and out of the way as fast as possible with- 
out regard to the best means of accomplishing their object. 
The French followed, and reached Constantinople just as 
the Germans were being almost entirely wiped out by 
Turkish troops in Asia Minor. The emperor played the 
same game with them, — got them over into Asia and left 
them to their fate. By far the larger part of both armies 
was sacrificed before they reached Syria. A more headless 
undertaking can hardly be imagined. The two nations had 
no understanding with each other or with the Christians of 
Asia. They had no comprehension of the real condition of 
affairs, but were simply carried along by a wild desire to 
fight the infidel. Two great undertakings against Damascus 
and Ascalon were rendered of no account by the luke-warm- 
ness of the Jerusalem people, who showed little gratitude to 
their preservers and even, — if we may believe the ugly 
stories afloat at the time, — did what they could to get them 



376 THE CRUSADES. [1147 

out of the way in the shortest possible time. The result of 
all this vast expenditure of life and treasure was absolutely 
nothing. The kings returned home with the glory of the 
cross about them, but the Holy Land was none the better 
off. The only possible advantage was the deposit in the 
country of a residuum of fighting material, which under the 
comparatively intelligent guidance of the local rulers might 
be made good use of. 

Again occurs an interval of a generation without any 
great general military undertaking from Europe. The chief 
Rise in incidents of this interval are the transfer of the 

Power of weight of the conflict from the north to the 
south, the rise of the power of Saladdin and the 
fall of Jerusalem. In this interval appeared all the evils 
inevitable from the feudal conditions of the conquest. 
While the Christian occupants were giving themselves up 
more and more to the softening influences of the climate 
and the loosened responsibilities of life far away from their 
proper homes, the Mohammedan power in the south had been 
gaining a new impulse from the career of the most remark- 
able leader of the whole crusading period. Saladdin was the 
subordinate governor of Egypt under the rule of the Turks 
in Asia, but through personal talent and ambition rose to 
the practically independent control of the whole of Syria as 
well. His personal uprightness of character, his devotion 
to his cause and his cultivation of learning and the arts of 
life stand out in favorable contrast to the barbarism of most 
of the leading princes of the crusading army. His policy 
seems to have been at first to get on with the Christian 
occupants, if possible, by treating with them on equal terms 
and allowing them liberty to maintain their settlements, if 
they would in turn let him alone. This reasonable policy 
was, however, in direct contrast to the intolerant spirit 
of the crusaders. Repeated treaties were violated with 



c. 1180J RISE OF SALADDIN. 377 

impunity by individual Christians, and at last, in despair of 
keeping the peace on these terms, Saladdin on his side 
sounded the crusading note among the excited Moham- 
medan populations of Syria and Egypt. The 
Jerusalem. result was a fair open fight near Tiberias, in 
^^^7. which the Christian army was totally defeated, 

and the king and the chief leaders captured. The power of 
life and death was in Saladdin's hands, but he used it only 
against those who had openly violated their faith with him. . 
Jerusalem and practically the whole of Syria fell easily into 
his hands. A narrow strip along the coast alone remained 
as a. starting-point for new operations in the future. 

The fall of Jerusalem was the most severe blow that had 
as yet fallen upon the Christians in the East. The news, 
Th Th" d reaching Europe at a moment when each nation 
Crusade. happened to be under the lead of a really vigor- 

ous monarch, served once more to revive the 
Crusading enthusiasm in almost its early glow. It needed 
neither a Peter nor a Bernard to convince Frederic Barba- 
rossa, Philip II and Richard of England that the highest 
duty of the Christian king was to lead his vassals to the 
holy war. It would be idle to repeat here the story of the 
march to Asia and the series of negotiations with the em- 
peror of the East — the lamentable tale of divided counsels, 
of incredible ignorance, of heroic bravery and frightful sac- 
rifice, which make up the history of this as of the previous 
expeditions. The romance of the crusades gathers largely 
about this episode, because of the distinction attaching to 
the leaders. But here again was the very secret of failure. 
Less distinguished captains might have found it possible, 
as did, in great measure, those of the first crusade, to sink 
personal differences, but these kings of the earth could never 
forget that they were kings, and that they stood for other 
things than mere devotion to the holy places of Jerusalem. 



378 THE CRUSADES. [1187 

The death of Frederic Barbarossa before he had even 
reached the soil of Syria showed how feeble were the bonds 
Weakness of ^^'^^^^^"^ ^^^^ together the most sincere and devoted 
the Christian army of this whole mad enterprise. A few 
^^^' straggling remnants of the great German host 

were all that succeeded in making their way far enough to 
be of service. The French-English alliance, brought about 
with all the show of embraces and swearing of oaths which 
marks a modern European encounter of sovereigns, was 
from the beginning the merest sham. Richard of England, 
the Christian hero of this crusade, was a hero only in the 
strict mediaeval sense, a barbarian in his violent impulses 
of generosity or of passion, fit rather to be the captain of a 
cavalry company than the head of a nation or the leader of 
a prolonged and difficult campaign. On the other hand w^s 
Saladdin, now getting on in years, but still able to command 
the allegiance of the whole southern Mohammedan world. 
The successes of the Christians in spite of the worst possi- 
ble generalship, are the best proof that a firmly united 
force, guided by a far-seeing and intelligent policy might 
yet have done wonders. These successes were strictly 
mediaeval feats of arms, the capture of Akkon and the 
Trnce forcing of Saladdin to destroy the fortifications 

between of Ascalon, meagre results purchased at immense 

Richard and 

Saladdin. cost and rendered of no use by the terms of a 

II92. shabby truce patched up between Richard and 

Saladdin, when both had grown tired of this hopeless 
waste of resources. By the terms of this peace Jerusalem 
was to remain in the hands of Saladdin, with free pas- 
sage for pilgrims to and from their holy places. The 
Christians were to hold a strip along the coast from Akkon 
to Tyre. The romantic adventures of the English king in 
trying to make his way home through a country in which he 
had none but enemies, formed the fitting climax to this 



J 1 89] THIRD AND FOURTH CRUSADES. 379 

headless enterprise. If it were our purpose to deal with the 
romance of the crusades, we should have to dwell longer 
upon this, perhaps the most celebrated of them all ; but in 
coming at once to the history of the fourth we enter upon a 
new phase of far more real importance. 

The fourth crusade is the complete illustration of how 

thoroughly the original spirit of the great movement had 

become obscured by other, purely practical con- 

of the Fourth siderations. It interests us hardly at all from 

Crusade. the point of view of the Holy Land, but very 

1203- 1204. , , • , ^11 . r 

greatly as showmg the vast development or com- 
mercial and political relations between the powers of the 
East and the West. Our repeated references to the con- 
duct of the Byzantine emperors towards the crusading 
armies will have made it clear that there coald be no real 
basis of good feeling for any further dealings at Constanti- 
nople. It was well recognized that, since the beginnings of 
Saladdin's career, any effectual blow at the Mohammedan 
power must be struck in Egypt. More and more it had 
been seen that the aid of the maritime cities of Italy, 
especially of Venice, was indispensable to any success. 
Venice, grown fat upon the commerce of the East, was far 
from being inclined to kill the goose that had given her 
such a golden product, while, on the other hand, her rela- 
tions with the Christian empire of Constantinople had long 
been getting more and more uncomfortable. If she could 
turn a part of the force of the crusading activity against 
Constantinople instead of against Alexandria or southern 
Palestine, it seemed likely that her own advantage would be 
great, and the establishment of a Latin control on the Bos- 
phorus promised to relieve many of the most difficult prob- 
lems of the defense of Syria. Add to all this the brilliant 
prospect that the great schism between the church of the 
West and that of the East might thus be bridged over and 

T 



380 THE CRUSADES. [1203- 1204 

all Christendom be brought under the headship of Rome, 
and we have a combination of motives out of which some- 
thing great might well be expected. 

It has been the fashion to decry the leaders of the fourth 
estate as recreants to a great trust and as false friends to a 
Th V f - ^^^^^^ which they were bound to uphold above 
Frankisli all others. At all events it is refreshing, after 
^^^' the mad folly of the previous expeditions, to find 
men who knew what they wanted and who took advantage 
humanly of the human means placed in their hands. It is 
easy to cry out upon the Venetians as a townful of greedy 
traders, with no thought but to get all they could and keep 
all they got ; but the fact is that they saw all the conditions 
of their undertaking clearly before they went into it and 
knew also the kind of stuff they had to deal with. When a 
vast army of French crusaders, got together by the usual 
recruiting process, called upon the town of Venice to carry 
them over to the Holy Land, Venice asked to be paid for 
its work. It demanded a large money price, but, as strong 
right arms and good swords were the handiest coin among 
the crusaders, it was willing to be paid largely in this kind 
and so called upon the army to help the republic against its 
enemies. Of these the first were the pirates of Zama on the 
Grecian coast of the Adriatic. The crusaders agreed, and, 
in spite of the protests of the pope that no crusader could 
properly bear arms against a Christian city, shared the 
labors and the spoils of a successful siege. 

During a comfortable winter at Zama the clever agents of 
the republic, the ancient doge, Henry Dandolo, at their heajd, 
were steadily working upon the leaders of the army 
turned ^^ persuade them that they would best serve the 

against Con- cross and themselves as well, by turning their 
arms, not against the Mohammedans of the South, 
but against the Christians of Constantinople. An additional 



I204] VENICE IN THE CRUSADE. 381 

pressure was brought to bear by the hberal promises of the 
young exiled emperor, Alexius III, who had been driven 
from his throne and had spent a long time in the West try- 
ing to find allies for his cause. He had been especially 
encouraged by the Swabian party in Germany and was 
ready to mortgage his hopes of sovereignty to any extent. 
A considerable party among the crusaders refused to listen 
to his tempting promises, stoutly maintaining that they had 
enlisted for the war against the infidel and would go into no 
other. By far the larger part, however, persuaded them- 
selves that this too was a service to the cross and the great 
armament set sail for Constantinople. 

The affairs of the eastern empire were in as bad a state 
as possible. The crown was being tossed about from one 

^ ^ - claimant to another, each worse tl^an the rest in 
Capture of ... 

Constant!- all those qualities which had proved the ruin 
nop e. ^ • of the state. Excessive taxation, immoderate 
luxury, incompetent administration of the army and the fleet 
had already brought the empire to the verge of destruction 
and deprived it of the vigor needed to repel so vigorous an 
assault. Constantinople fell with very little resistance. 
The division of the spoil had been arranged beforehand 
with due regard to the rights of the several parties to the 
undertaking. Venice received the claim to three-eighths of 
the conquered territory and the right to name the new 
patriarch of Constantinople, while the "Franks" took the 
imperial crown with its responsibilities of administration. 
It will be observed that no nation of Europe took part as 
such in this great western achievement. The end towards 
which the dreams and half-formed ambitions of such men as 
Charlemagne, Otto III, Gregory VII, Nicholas I, Robert 
Guiscard and Henry VI had vaguely pointed was accom- 
plished. The Greek , empire had been overcome by the 
power of the Romanic west, not for the purpose of national 



382 THE CRUSADES. [1204 

aggrandizement but incidentally, as it were, in the course of 
a prolonged religious war and through the energy and capac- 
ity of a little commercial city at the head of the Adriatic. 

The cleverness of Venice was shown especially in its 
readiness to surrender all political connection with the new 
The Latin Latin empire. It was quite willing that others 

Empire of should undertake the hopeless task of straight- 

Constanti- , , 1 i 1 i r i t^ 

nopie. enmg out the tangled thread of the Byzantme 

I204-I26I. politics. Whatever hope the Syrian Christians 
may have had of substantial advantages to follow the cap- 
ture of Constantinople was doomed to disappointment. The 
new emperors, — Frenchmen or Flemings, — unfamiliar with 
the situation, found themselves from the first involved in 
the most desperate straits for money and men to maintain 
their position. They gave up from the start any idea of 
doing great things in Asia and turned their attention almost 
wholly to strengthening themselves in Thrace and the adja- 
cent lands of the West. Across the Propontis, at Nicea, 
there still remained a protesting remnant of Grecian power, 
carrying on the name of the empire and biding its time 
until the inevitable demoraUzation of the Frankish intruders 
should do the work of re-conquest more effectually than any 
arms. The real gainer was Venice, which, seizing upon one 
and another attractive bit of land in Greece or an island in 
the Aegean, maintained it as a feudatory power and thus 
■ increased its own influence as a centre of actual civilization. 
The Roman papacy, at first opposed to the whole expedi- 
tion as a violation of the crusading spirit, conformed, as 
ever, to the accomplished fact and lent its aid to the 
defenders of Constantinople as freely as it had formerly 
used it against them. It is interesting to note that at the 
moment when the papacy of Innocent III was coming out 
first best in its conflicts with the most powerful kings of 
Europe, the republic of Venice had snapped its fingers at 



1 204-1261] LATIN EMPIRE OE CONSTANTINOPLE. 383 

the papal excommunication and gone quietly on its way 
doing as it pleased. All hopes of a church union under the 
papal lead were totally disappointed. It made little differ- 
ence what the alien rulers of Constantinople might desire ; 
the body of the people were too deeply attached to their 
own religious traditions to give the slightest support to any 
such approaches. The real result of the fourth crusade was 
a great intermingling of populations in the whole country 
around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, and Out of 
this came a vast impulse to all the activities of European 
life. 

The phrase "fifth crusade" includes the long series of 
expeditions and negotiations that went on between the 
Fifth yea^rs 12 17 and 1230. The central figure of 
Crusade. them is the emperor Frederic II, but the actors 

I2I7-I230. were representatives of all the European states 
and especially of the papal power. The reign of Frederic 
is coincident with those of three of the most vigorous 
among the successors of Peter. Innocent III, his guardian 
and friend, died in 12 16, when Frederic was too young and 
too unsteady on the imperial throne to make him either a 
desirable ally or a dangerous enemy. Honorius III and 
his successor, Gregory IX, men otherwise of very different 
character, were alike in fiery enthusiasm for the recovery of 
the Holy Land. The response to the summons to the cross 
was never more enthusiastic. Another vast army was got 
under way, and this time, without hesitation, the aim was 
directed against Egypt. The key to the Nile valley was the 
very strong city and fortress of Damietta, and against this 
the whole force of the army was directed. The resistance 
was most obstinate, but the city fell into the hands of the 
Christians, purchased by tremendous sacrifices. The effect 
was the same as that of all previous successes. The army 
could win a victory, but the leaders were totally without the 



3S4 THE CRUSADES. [1217-1230 

intelligence to make use of it. Either the rest of Egypt 
ought to have been conquered or Damietta ought to have 
been used as a ransom for the holy places in Syria, which, 
men seemed in danger of forgetting, were after all the 
real object of all this vast expenditure of energy. The 
sultan of Egypt saw this situation far more clearly than 
the crusaders, and offered to restore Jerusalem to them on 
the most favorable conditions if they would evacuate 
Egypt. The few clear heads in the army were willing 
to accept, but the extreme clerical party, led by a papal 
legate, and the Venetians, eager not to lose the great 
advantage of a strong commercial position in Egypt, de- 
termined on continuing the war there. The result was 
that all was lost. A desperate rally of the Mohammedan 

forces and skillful use of the canals, by which 
1221. 

the whole country was laid under water, forced 

the Christian army to conclude an empty truce, and, 
with no compensation for their loss, to evacuate Egypt 
entirely. 

All this happened before the young emperor, who had 

assumed the cross seven years before, had taken any 

. jj serious steps looking toward personal partici- 

and tlie pation in the war. His hands had been more 

Roman Curia, ^j^^^ f^^|j ^-^j^ ^^^ establishment of his power in 

Germany and Italy and in fighting the infidel on his own 
territory in Sicily. Now, however, a new motive led him to 
turn his attention to the East. He betrothed himself with 
the daughter of the king of Jerusalem, and promised to set 
out for the Holy Land in the year 1225. The marriage, 
indeed, took place in that year, and with it Frederic assumed 
at once the title of king of Jerusalem ; but the crusade was 
still postponed. Not until two years later did Frederic 
finally come to the point of setting sail, and then, suddenly 
taken seriously ill, he put about and landed at Otranto. 



1217-25] CRUSADING POLICY OF FREDERIC II. 



385 



The excuse of illness was not accepted by the pope, 
Gregory IX, and Frederic was at once put under the ban. 
Precisely how much of the bh.me of this unhappy quarrel 
rests upon the one and the other party is not clear. Certain 
it is, however, that the heir of the Hohenstaufen policy in 
Italy needed no very specific cause to bring him at any 
moment into conflict with a pope in whom the spirit of 
Alexander III seemed again embodied. At all events, 
Frederic demonstrated his sincerity by continuing his arma- 
ment, and, a few months later, actually setting out once 
more for Syria. Excommunicated before for not going, he 
was now again excommunicated for going without first 
removing the ban of the church. 

In considering the actions of Frederic in the East we 
have always to remember that we are dealing with a man 
. , who was in many ways out of tune with the age 
Crusading: in which he lived. He was a modern man con- 
Policy, demned to get on with circumstances that were 
still almost wholly mediaeval. His mind was eminently a 
practical one, going at his ends by the straightest lines, and 
not sensitive to the kind of ideals that governed the actions 
of his contemporaries. The crusading theory was that, of 
all things in the world, the finest was to fight the infidel, no 
matter at what odds, and no matter how wasteful the ex- 
penditure of life and treasure might be. Frederic took the 
view that the prime object of the crusades was not the fight- 
ing, but the recovery of Jerusalem, and that if this could be 
done without needless expenditure of blood, so much the 
better. It seemed to him, therefore, good crusading to take 
advantage of a split in the Mohammedan camp and to enter 
into negotiations, looking towards the surrender of Jerusa- 
lem, with the head of one of the parties. He was man 
enough to believe that a Mohammedan was at least worth 
treating with, and treating fairly. The result was altogether 



386 THE CRUSADES. [1229 

the most sensible stroke that had been dealt in Syria for 
more than a century. 

By the terms of this noteworthy treaty of 1229 the Sultan, 
Alkamil, surrendered to Frederic the city of Jerusalem in 

full possession, with no restriction except that 
1229 "^° the great Mosque of Omar should be reserved 

to the Mohammedans, and that Mohammedan 
pilgrims might freely come and go unarmed to perform their 
worship at this shrine. Frederic received also a broad 
strip of country connecting Jerusalem with Joppa, and so 
along the coast as far as Beyrout, thus securing the ancient 
highway of the Christian pilgrimages. The treaty further 
prescribed that Frederic should assist his ally against all 
enemies, Christians though these might be. It is clear that 
this was a blow at the North-Syrian states of Tripolis and 
Antioch, especially at the possessions of the military orders 
in that region ; but from the point of view of plain common 
sense there was no obligation whatever upon Frederic to 
support these feeble Christian states at the expense of any 
advantage to the kingdom of Jerusalem. They had seldom 
been anything but an injury to the real well-being of that 
land, which was the only plausible pretext for any Christian 
occupation of Syria. This treaty was to hold for ten years. 
As soon as it was concluded Frederic set out with all haste 
for home, where during his absence the pope had overrun a 
great part of his kingdom with troops and incited rebellion 
in every quarter. Frederic's energy and popularity rapidly 
overcame this danger, and in the Peace of San Germano, 
1230, he compelled the pope to release him from the ban 
and to make important concessions. From this time on the 
relations with the Mohammedan powers begin to take on 
the character of international dealings, which the fury of the 
crusading zeal had heretofore rendered impossible. The 
practical considerations of commercial and industrial advan- 



'KuCE ]V1 I uOSLJs.y. — -S/. LuUJ)S. 

tage were making themselves superior to those of religious 
fanaticism, and with this we approach the threshold of a new 
period for Europe. 

The last set of expeditions with which we i^re to deal, the 
so-called sixth crusade, represent once more a\^vival of the 
early spirit of the crusading times with all its 
of St. Louis, religious enthusiasm and all its incapacities for 
^ s~i < • practical conquest. Louis IX of France, while 
in many ways a modern king, in so far as resistance to th'.t 
claims of rival sovereignties in his own land went, was a 
thoroughly mediaeval man in his religious instincts and in 
his devotion to the ideals of that time. His two crusades, 
the first against Egypt lasting from 1248 to 1254, and the 
second against Tunis in the years from 1267 to 1270, were 
repetitions of the same heroic courage and the same reckless 
waste of energy that had marked the earlier efforts of 
Richard and of Barbarossa. The Mohammedan powers 
Fi alL of ^^^^ everywhere in the ascendant. One after 
Jerusalem. another capable leaders offered themselves and 
found devoted followers. Jerusalem had fallen 
in 1244, and this time permanently, into the hands of the 
Egyptian sultans. The lands of the kingdom, defended 
chiefly by the knights of the military orders, were rapidly 
crumbling to pieces. The Latin empire of Constantinople, 
in no way an improvement upon its predecessor, gave way 
before the continued assaults of the Greeks in 1261, and 
from that time on the recovery of the European territories 
of the eastern emperors was only a question of time. 

The efforts of Louis in the south were thus completeh 

thrown away, isolated from all connection with the trut 

^ . . centre of the Christian interests in the East, and 

Outcome of 

the Sixth maintained only by incredible sacrifices. The 

Crusade. ^^^^j^ ^^ ^j^^ j^.^^^ j^ ^j^^ ^^^-^^^ ^£ j^-^ oriental 

adventures has thrown a halo about his exploits and helped 



777/ [124S-1270 

>o win for him later the patent of conventional sainthood. 
I'he real value of his hopeless struggle was in revealing to 
the world of Europe once for all that the time for this kind 
^ : thing had pa:^ed forever. Henceforth there was to be 
more profitable work for the sovereigns of rapidly develop- 
ing national states than squandering their resources in 
.Ustant expeditions for a heavenly reward. 

It remains for us to give a hurried glance at the effects 
of the crusade upon many interests of European life, which 

r-.-x 4. **,. were least of all in the thouo:hts of those who 
Etfects of tlie ^ 

Cmsades preached and fought in the struggles of the 
upon tirope. -^^Lst. The crusading idea represents above all 
ise that capacity of the Middle Ages for pursuing an ideal 
without regard to its practical aspects which we have else- 
vvbere emphasized. It appears in philosophy in the pre- 
dominance of idealistic " Realism ' ' over the practical 
" Nominalism "; it is seen in politics in the curious effort to 
maintain the ideal " empire " in the face of such great 
practical forces as the development of the Italian communes 
and the territorial lordships of Germany. It is seen in 
religious organization in the growth of that great ideal, the 
papacy, in defiance of all the natural associations of the 
i}.a.tional churches or of the episcopate as a whole. Several 
specific manifestations of the crusades emphasize this ideal- 

_ ,. ism to the utmost. One is the constant recur- 

Persecution 

of Jews and rence of violent outbreaks of popular fury against 
ire ics. Jews, for no earthly reason whatever, except 
that they were not Christians and that their ancestors a 
thousand years before had crucified the Christian Saviour. 
ihQ attacks upon heretics, notably the Albigensian wars, 
^ owed a growing sensitiveness to the need of uniformity 
and of conformity to the orthodox ideal. Even such a man 
as Frederic II, who had a clear enough head when it came 
tr> treating with infidels, or even to tolerjting-«sffaspn-!ploying- 



1097-1270] THE/R EFFECTS UPON EUROPE, 389 

them in his own lands, has left us in his decrees against 
heretics the most bloody witness to his compliance in this 
respect with the temper of his age. 

In the midst of the excitement caused by this persecu- 
tion, there appeared in France in the year 1212 a shepherd- 
lad who, with all the apparatus of more mature 
TheChil- ' 1 

dren's Cm- prophets, declared himself called upon by God 

sades. I2I2. ^^ \q,2,^ an army into the Holy Land and recover 
the sacred soil. The attempts of the saner authorities — 
half-hearted attempts, lest this might, after all, be the will of 
God — availed nothing to stem the tide of infant enthusi- 
asm. Thousands of children, we are credibly informed, let 
themselves be carried away ; swarms of elder innocents 
joined them and a regular army found its way to Marseilles, 
only to fall a prey to land-sharks and water-sharks, some of 
its members reaching the East in misery and others, more 
fortunate, lost by the road. A similar story, local in Ger- 
many, carries an army of children first to Genoa and then 
to Brindisi, where they were prevented from embarking 
and sent back, as many as could get there, to their homes. 
Adorned, as these stories undoubtedly are, by the additions 
of a pious legend, there is no ground for rejecting them 
entirely, and they are wholly in harmony with the instinct of 
idealism we are illustrating. 

How far the spirit of conquest was a cause, and how far 
a result of the crusades, it would hardly be safe to say. At 
The Crusades ^^^ events it is developed in many directions 
and the spirit during just this time. It is a striking fact that 

onques . fj-^^^ ^j^^ conquest of Saxony by Charlemagne 
to that of England by William of Normandy, there is no 
noteworthy extension of any European Christian power. 
The persistent warfare along the eastern frontier of Ger- 
many had not resulted in any considerable advance of that 
frontier line. The gain over the Arabs in Spain was very 



390 THE CRUSADES. [1204 

slight and cannot be thought of in any true sense as a 
conquest. The movement of the crusades provided at once 
a purpose and a direction for the conquering spirit. For 
the moment all thoughts were fixed upon Syria as the 
promised land, with what bitter disappointments to follow 
we have just been learning. Soon, however, the notion of 
conquest took wider scope. Before the death of Robert 
Guiscard in 1085, the Normans of Apulia had already begun 
to cast longing eyes across the Adriatic, and from the first 
movement of the crusades we can see that interest crop- 
ping out at every turn, until with the fall of Constantinople 
in 1204 the way seemed opened for an indefinite expansion 
of the European powers upon the lands of ancient Greece. 
If that conquest had been made by any one strong hand, 
with permanent resources to fall back upon, there seems 
good reason to think that Greece might have become a 
Latinized and Romanized country. That result was pre- 
vented by divided interests and by the revival of the Eastern 
empire with unexpected energy. The reaction of the 
crusades was also felt along the German frontier. During 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there is a steady 
advance all along the line of the Elbe ; new lands are 
conquered and regularly occupied by colonists from the 
west, and finally the settlement of the Teutonic order on 
the Vistula gives to Germany an advanced post of civiliza- 
tion, which was to serve as a bulwark in the development of 
the land lying immediately to the west of it. In Spain 
there is a new spirit of energy in the war against the infidel ; 
bit by bit the land is wrested from his grasp and incor- 
porated with one or another of the states then forming and 
destined to make together the great Spanish kingdom. 

Much has been written about the effect of the crusades 
in giving to Europe a sense of its unity as against the whole 
non-Christian world outside. One would say that such 



1097-1270] SPIRIT OF CONQUEST.— NATIONALITY. 391 

ought to have been the case, but in fact precisely the 

opposite result is the permanent one. The whole history of 

the crusading armies, especially those led by the 
Development o 7 i ^ j 

of a National European sovereigns, goes to show that, far 
Sentiment, from being guided by a sense of unity, their 
consciousness of national differences was very much sharp- 
ened by contact. They thought of themselves, as the 
fractions of a mediaeval army always did, as allies for a 
deed of arms, not as bound together by any permanent or 
natural tie. So far as the Syrian colonists themselves were 
concerned, it is very curious to notice how, from the very 
first, the French nationality dominated over and to a great 
extent excluded all the rest. The common name of all 
crusaders in the mouths of their enemies was " Frank." 
The French language, and by this is meant the tongue of 
northern France, the true French, became the ordinary 
medium of intercourse throughout the Christian East. 
Other nationalities, the Norman-Italian and the Provengal 
especially, made, from time to time, vigorous efforts to 
impress themselves upon the land, but without success. 
Whatever apparent unity among the Syrian Christians we 
may seem to discover was therefore due, not to any sense of 
common interest, but rather to the presence of one strongly 
marked race, capable of bringing the rest into an outward 
unity with itself. 

In Europe itself there is no analogous development. The 
period of the crusades is precisely that of dawning national 

consciousness. The 2:reatest leaders of the 
The Several ^■ 

Nationalities Crusades, Richard of England, Frederic Barba- 

nndercrusad- ^ossa, Philip Augustus, Louis IX and Frederic 
mg: Leaders. . 

. II were just the men who have stamped them- 
selves most clearly on the history of their respective 
countries as the most eager champions of the national idea 
as against feudal indifference. Furthermore it is in just 



392 THE CRUSADES. [[ 097-1 270 

tms period that the one greatest unifying force in European 
life/^he Roman papacy, doubtless the chief moving power 
in the early stages of the crusading movement, overreach'es 
itself and begins to lose its prestige. From 1200 on it is 
clear that the papacy can no longer control the spirit it has 
summoned ; the Venetian tradesmen and the "enlightened " 
Frederic II alike act in outspoken indifference to its opinion, 
and the disastrous results of those final expeditions in which 
its counsels did largely prevail, proved conclusively that it 
was not a competent leader of European affairs. If the 
crusades affected the question of a national feeling at all, 
it was rather by stimulating than by repressing it. 

On the other hand it may be noticed that a strong 
national consciousness is not inconsistent with a growth in 
International ^^ spirit of international fairness and decency, 
Relations and that kind of growth may be distinctly seen 
s imu a e . -^^ ^^^ period. It takes its rise with the com- 
mercial cities of Italy, whose industries were unquestionably 
immensely stimulated by the whole movement of the crusad- 
ing times. Their keen rivalry in trade led them ultimately 
into dealings with each other, in which we see plainly the 
beginnings of a spirit of international comity. The same 
temper is visible in the relations of Frederic II with these 
cities and with his neighbors on the Saracen side. It would 
be going too far to discover in this period a tender consid- 
eration for the foreigner, which has not even yet become 
clearly defined in our race. The idea that other nations 
have as good a right to prosperity as ourselves is one that 
has not even yet taken full possession of political philosophy. 
The most we dare say is that here was a fruitful germ and 
that it was being prepared for later ripening. 

In the world of thought we come also to an inquiry which 
is far from simple. How did the crusades affect European 
thought ? It is easy to say that the Mohammedans were in 



1097-1270] NATIOXAL UNITY. — LEARNING. 393 

many ways superior in culture to the Christians, and that 
precisely in these ways we find the Europeans gaining 

during the period we are studying ; it is quite 
upon another matter, however, to say that this gain is 

European owing directly to the contact between the two 

civilizations produced by the crusades. One is al- 
ways tempted to find causes in sudden and violent phenomena 
and to overlook those more silent, but also more powerful 
forces which are working slowly and gradually, from age to 
age, bringing a race upward from barbarism to civilization. 
Such forces as these we have seen steadily acting from the 
time of. Charlemagne onward, and perhaps it will not be 
going too far if we say that they continued to work on in 
their own way and would ultimately have produced their 
natural results, but that they were stimulated by contact 
with impulses from Arabic sources. It is well known that 
many of the best things of ancient Greek life were taken up 
by Arab scholars and passed over through their mediation 
into European hands. Allowing what value we may to this 
service, it still remains true that the thing which really 
stirred men's minds and brought about a new period for 
Europe was the study of ancient Greek and Roman life for 
its own sake and that this study^did not depend, in any 
essential way, upon the influences ot, the crusades. 

If we come now to literature proper, the effect is more 
marked. For one thing the crusades furnished a vast new 
Effects material to the poetic imagination. The crusader 

upon is, beyond all rivalry, the heroic figure of the 

European Middle Ages. His adventures, magni- 
fied and distorted out of all historical shape by the fancy of 
the poet, became the prevailing stuff on which the struggling 
modern languages tried their strength. The journey to the 
Holy Land was the great opportunity for the European youth 
to see the world, and he improved it as youth have ever 



394 THE CRUSADES. [1097-1270 

been eager to do. He felt here that joyous sense ot" freedom 
from the irksome bonds of home and conventional society 
which has been the making and the marring of youth in all 
times. Our accounts of the passagia show conclusively 
that, however innocent they may have been at home, thj 
pilgrims of the cross were now cutting their eye-teeth with a 
vengeance. They were learning the great lesson of seeing 

Influence ^^^^ ^^^ '^'^ ^^"^^' ^^^ '^^ ^^ '^'^ '^^ pictured to them by 

towards the pious teachings of a religious tradition. 

They took in all too eagerly the notion that 
Europe and Christianity even, were not all there was in the 
world. They found men as clever, as devoted to religion, 
as honest, as temperate, as brave, in short as human, as 
they themselves. It is impossible that lessons of this sort 
could have gone for nothing. They must have roused in 
the mind of many an eager youth the question whether, after 
all, there were not something worth having in this vast, 
struggling and striving human existence ; whether the ideal 
of the cloister were, after all, the highest. There is little 
doubt that all this was helping on towards that great upris- 
ing of the human mind in the next century, of which the 
best definition is that it turned men's thoughts to their 
common humanity and led them by the leading-strings of 
the classic authors, those great permanent sources of interest 
in the humane side of life, to a new conception of beauty 
and truth. The thing we have to guard ourselves against 
is ascribing to the crusades a sole or decisive influence in 
matters where the impulse had already been given in other 
ways. The crusader is, in this aspect, the companion figure 
to that wandering scholar to whom we have elsewhere 
alluded as heralding also, in his way, the coming of a new 
time. 

If we turn to the commercial and economic results of the 
crusades, we find ourselves upon fairly solid ground. So 



k 



1097-1270] LirERATURE. — COMMERCE. 395 

long as the whole coast of Syria was in Christian hands its 

harbors offered so many points of connection between the 

p-reat resources of the East and the rapidly devel- 
Commercial =' . ^ . , 

Effects of the oping wants of the West. As industrial centres, 

Crusades. ^j^^ Christian states of Syria were never successful, 
l^heir holders had no such conception of their functions as 
would have made them good landlords. Like most feudal 
barons, they thought only of* getting all they could out of 
their territories without much regard to developing them in 
the best way for their ultimate advantage. An intelligent 
colonial policy, which should have regarded the eastern 
states as essential parts of one or of several European 
governments, might have made out of these half-barren 
wastes a veritable garden of the Lord. In the absence of 
any such intelligent policy it was left for the commercial 
instinct and experience of the Italian communes to make 
what they could out of the contact thus brought about 
between the West and the native populations of the East, 
using the Christian cities only as markets for the exchange 
of wares. The rather scanty records of this exchange go to 
show that Europe was enriched by the importation of articles 
of luxury, spices, fruits, textile fabrics in silk and cotton, 
wine, dye-stuffs and glass-ware. The imports were chiefly 
such articles as the Franks needed for their support, 
weapons, horses, clothes and, above all, grain. This last 
item shows plainly how little was done in the way of a devel- 
oped agriculture. Time and again the fortunes of a besieged 
city were saved by the arrival of grain supplies from the 
West. 

Commercial intercourse on this scale could not be main- 
tained without the use of money, and money 

Effects! ^^^' ^P ^° ^^^ ^^"^^ ^^ ^^^ crusades, been a very 

scarce article in Europe. The very nature of 

the feudal arrangements had made the use of money in all 



396 THE CRUSADES. [1097 1270 

forms of public life almost entirely unnecessary. The 
soldier, the judge, or the public official of whatever grade, 
was paid, not by a regular wage,' as in modern times, but 
by the assignment of a revenue from some valuable piece 
of propeirty, which he worked for what it was worth. The 
sudden demands of the crusading princes, knights and 
pilgrims made necessary an immediate supply of ready 
money. The baron must provide for his own equipment 
and that of a certain number of followers, and unless they 
were to live by the road, they must carry with them enough 
ready cash to pay for their daily needs on the way. ^The 
beginning of the crusades coincides with the rise of a new 
trade in Europe, the business of money-lending, and the 
exchanging of values on a money basis. Until then, and, 
indeed, in theory for long afterward, the lending of money 
at interest was regarded as an immoral act. Money was 
not thought of as a commodity like others, having a definite 
value, and therefore properly to be hired at a reasonable 
compensation to the lender ; somehow there was an idea of 
evil connected with it, and a man who traded in it was 
despised as a " dog of a Jew " or a recreant Christian. The 
impulse to a more practical view of commercial life began 
before the crusades, but it doubtless received from them an 
enormous impetus. It was, at least, right to borrow money 
to serve the cause of religion, and though we have abundant 
evidence that the conscience of the day was not specially 
acute in the matter of payment, we know, also, that the 
business went on steadily increasing, and that is the best 
proof that, in the main, debts of this sort were held to be 
„ . . bindinjr. The hidi rate of interest will not 

of Modern surprise us when we consider the chances of loss 
Banking:. |^y ^.j^g multitudinous dangers of the journey, or 
by the reaction of the conscience when the immediate pres- 
sure was past. As the crusades went on we find the cities 



I097- 



COMiMKRCE ANJ) FINANCE. 397 



of Italy developing a class of bankers who supplied the 
leading princes of the north with letters of credit, or with 
notes of exchange, on their correspondents in the citie's of 
the Frankish East. Multitudes of coins found in the soil 
of the Holy Land^bear witness to the immense variety of 
the moneys used there, but show, also, that the traders of 
the time knew how to protect themselves against the evils 
of a varied coinage. They devised a new coin which would 
be acceptable to Christians and Mohammedans alike, and 
did not hesitate to impress upon it the name of Allah and 
the date of the Hegira. This is the famous " saracen 
byzant," long the chief unit of commerce in the East. It is 
the living witness to the triumph of practical human inter- 
ests over the exalted, and often foolishly idealistic, motives 
of the early crusades. 

If now we sum up all these results, we see that European 
life was enriched through the crusades by receiving a 

new impetus to forces which had, in most cases, 
Resuit^*^ already begun to work. It will not be fanciful 

to say that the horizon of Europe was immensely 
widened by this continual movement of her most active 
spirits to and from the mysterious and inspiring Orient. 
The main purpose of the crusades is completely lost sight 
of in this vast process of education. It mattered absolutely 
nothing whether the Holy Sepulchre were in the hands of 
Christians or Mohammedans. It mattered very much 
whether the mind of Europe was to consume itself in the 
endless circle of the scholastic logic, and whether its fresh 
and vigorous political development was to be stifled under 
the oven'-rown l^^orp-^'? thcorrnAiv Tic 
became ] 
to the ( 

practical ....v^x^oco, wmun me wonderful experience of the 
crusades forced upon them. 



■ CHAPTER XII. 

THE GRO^A^TH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Zeller, B. L'histoire de France racontee par les contemporains. 

65 vols., i6mo. 1879-88. 
Masson, G. Early Chroniclers of France. A short account of the 

principal French sources for our period. 
Ordonnances des rois de France de la Ille race, — 1514- 17-3-49- 

22 vols., fol. 
ISAMBERT, F. A. Recueil general des anciennes lois frangaises. 

420-1789. 29 vols. 1822-33. 
Beugnot, a. Les Oli?n, ou Registres des arrets rendus par la cour du 

roi. 3 vols., 4to. 1848. 
Les Etablissements de Saint-Louis, ed. P. Viollet. 4 vols. 1886. 
AlMOlNUS. Vita S. Abbonis, — 1004. In Bouquet, Scriptores Rerum 

Gailicariim, x. Transl. in Guizot's Collection, vi. 
Hei.GALDUS. Vita Roberti regis. Bouq. x. Transl. in Guizot, vi. 
Ademarus Cabannensts. Chroizicon Aquitanicwn et Francicum, — 

1029. Mon. Germ. iv. Bouq. ii, v, viii, x. 
Radulfus Glaber. Historia, 987-1044. Bouq. viii, x, and ed. M. Prou, 

1886. M. G. vii. 
Hugo Flaviniacensis. Ckronicon Virdunense, — 1102. M. G. viii. 
SiGEBERTUs Gemblacensis. ChronicoH, — III2. Bouq. x, xi. M. G. vi. 
Odilo Cluniacensis. Epistolae. Bouq. x. 
Ivo Carnotensis. Epistolae. Bouq. xv. 
Ordericus Vitalis. Historid Ecclesiastica, — 1142. Bouq. ix, x, xi, 

xii. 
Suger. Vita Liidni'i'-' VI Bouq. vii and 8vo. 1867. Transl. in 

Guizot, viii. 
■ Liber de relnis sua ad7ninistratio?ie gestis. Bouq. xii and 8vo. 

1867. 



LITERATURE. 399 

GuiLLELMUS DE Nangiaco. Gcsta Ludovici IX, Bouq. XX. 

Chronicon, — 1300. Bouq. xx and 8vo. .1843. Transl. in Guizot, 

xiii. 



MODERN WORKS. 

Cheruel, H. Dictionnaire historique des institutions, moeurs et 

coutumes de la France. 6 ed. 1884. 
General Histories of France by Guizot, Martin, Michelet, Dareste, 

Kitchin, Crowe and others. 
Stephen, J. Lectures on the History of France. 2 vols. 2d ed. 

1852. 
LoNGNON., A. Atlas historique de la France, fol. 1889 et seq. 
LuCHAiRE, A. Manuel des Institutions Fran9aises sous les Capetiens 

directs. 1892. The best summary of French institutions, military, 

royal, feudal, ecclesiastical and popular. 
Flach, J. Les Origines de I'Ancienne France. 2 vols. 1886. 
LucHAiRE, A. Histoire des Institutions Monarchiques de la France 

sous les premiers Capetiens. (987-1180.) 2d ed. 2 vols. 1891. 
EsMEiN, A. Cours Elementaire d'Histoire du Droit Fran9ais. 1892. 
Glasson, E. Histoire du Droit et des Institutions de la France. 

5 vols. 1893. 
Warnkonig und Stein. Franzosische Staats- und Rechtsgeschichte. 

3 vols. 2d ed. 1875. 
ViOLLET, P. Histoire des Institutions Politiques et Administratives 

de la France, vol. i. 1890. 

Precis de I'Histoire du Droit Fran9ais. 2d ed. 1893. 

Rambaud, a. Histoire de la Civilisation Fran9aise. 2 vols. 1887. 
RosiERES, R. Histoire de la Societe Fran9aise au Moyen-Age. 2d ed. 

2 vols. 1882. 
Favre, E. Eudes, Comte de Paris et Roi de France. 1894. 
Lot, Ferd. Les Derniers Carolingiens, 984-991. 1891. 
Kai.ckstein, C. Geschichte des franzosischen Konigthums unter 

den ersten Capetingern. Vol. i. 1877. 
LucHAiRE, A. Louis VI. 1890. 

Etudes sur I'administration de Louis VII. 1885. 

Walker, W. Increase of Royal Power under Philip Augustus. 1888. 
Faure, F. Histoire de Saint-Louis. 2 vols. 1865. 
Wallon, H. Saint Louis et son Temps. 2 vols. 1875. 
Beugnot, a. Essai sur les Institutions de Saint Louis. 1S21. 



400 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MOXARCI/Y. [S8S 

We have traced the development of the new poUtical 
powers in Germany and in Italy from the close of the legiti- 
mate Carolingians in 888 to the revival of the 
Parallel 
Development Empire under Otto I and its steady progress under 

in Germany i^ig Saxon, Franconian and Swabian successors. 
andltaly. ^ , , . r , • • , 

in the history oi those countries it has become 

clear that the chief political interest of the people lay in the 
establishment and maintenance of vigorous local centres, 
which were then brought into a kind of dependence upon 
larger political units called kingdoms. In Italy this kingdom 
was in theory the descendant of the ancient Lombard power, 
with its seat at Pavia and with a very slight hold upon its 
branches reaching out over the rest of the peninsula. In 
Germany the monarchy was a purely new creation, arising 
out of the necessity for defense against foreign enemies and 
founded solely upon the agreement of the local powers. 
These local political associations were in Germany actual 
race units, marked off, one from the other, by family tra- 
ditions of long standing and of great influence. The 
authority of the leaders within them rested upon a patriotic 
instinct of loyalty to chieftains who had for generations 
represented the warlike spirit of the stem. In Italy there 
was no such clearly marked distinction of race, but the local 
powers rested mainly upon privileges received from one and 
another ruler, from Charlemagne down. 

In neither of these countries was the monarchical spirit 
strongly marked. The monarchy was elective, in the strict- 

„. ., est sense of that word. We have seen how in 

Similar 

Conditions Germany it was handed over from one stem- 
in France, leader to another, only beginning to tak'e on 
something of an hereditary form when king Henry I gained 
the consent of the principes to the coronation of his son 
Otto during his own lifetime. So in Italy we traced the 
efforts of leading families in the centre and the north to gain 



c. 900] THE FRENCH TERRITORIES. 401 

and hold a royal power for themselves, until finally it 

appeared that the only way out of it was to accept the 

German king as king also of Italy and to take what comfort 

could be found in the reflection that he was also emperor. ^ 

Now at the close of the CaroUngian period in France the 

political conditions were almost precisely similar to those in 

Germany and Italy. Slight differences there were, and it 

has been the fashion of historians, especially of French 

historians, to emphasize these differences, rather than the 

still more striking similarities. 

The territory which was already beginning . to be known 

as " France," was divided at the close of the ninth century 

into several pretty clearly marked divisions. 

TheFrencli xhere was, first, the great distinction of France 
Territories. . 

north of the Loire and France south of the Loire. 

This distinction was a deep-seated one, resting upon a 

difference of race which goes back into the time of the first 

settlements of Germanic peoples upon Gallic soil. South of 

the Loire the population was mainly of Gallo-Roman stock, 

not materially changed by the storms of Ger- 
Aauitaine. . . . , . , , 

manic mvasion which had passed over it. Politi- 
cally it had been subdued by Visigoths and then by Franks, 
but its actual life had not been seriously affected by this 
political subjection. The kings of the Franks from Clovis 
down had never found it an easy country to control. The 
spirit of local independence was always ready to rally around 
some local leader to resist or to make terms with the royal 
power. Indeed, Charlemagne and his successors down to 
Charles the Bald had treated Aquitaine as a separate 
kingdom, only to be governed in dependence upon the 
king of the Franks. Charlemagne had divided the country 
into counties, of which the chief were those of Tou- 
louse and Poitou. The counts of both these districts 
appear also at different times as dukes of Aquitaine, and 



402 GROWTH OF TJ/E FREA'CJ/ MOA'ARCHV. [c. 900 

as feudal lords over the numerous smaller divisions of 

southern France. 

Southeast of Aquitaine, along the Mediterranean coast, 

lay a strip of land, in which the Visigoths, after their con- 
quest bv the Franks, had maintained themselves 

Septimania. ' , 

long enough to nx upon the country the name 

•* Gothia," changed, however, in course of time to " Septi- 
mania," from its seven principal cities. Its fortunes were 
during the Middle Ages generally connected with the counts 
of Toulouse, who took from this connection the title of 
dukes of Narbonne. Southwest of Aquitaine, between the 
river Garonne and the Pyrenees, was a territory occupied 
by a population made up of a mixture of the Gallo- 
Roman stock with an element of the mysterious Basque 
inhabitants of northwestern Spain. It appears from 
Charlemagne's time under the name ''Vasconia" or Gas- 
cony, and maintains an independent existence until 1052, 
when it falls into the hands of the dukes of Aquitaine 
and there remains. 

In the treaty of Verdun (843) the portion of the Burgun- 
dian lands lying to the west of the Upper Saone was sepa- 
rated from the rest and joined to the West- 
Frankish state. 1 here it remamed forever under 
the name of the duchy of Bourgogne, separated entirely 
in its political fortunes from the Burgundian lands east 
of the Saone and Rhone, which, as we have seen, were 
turned rather towards the east and south than towards the 
west. After a series of local dukes the government of the 
duchy came into the hands of the Capetian house and 
remained there until the fourteenth century. 

To the north of the Loire we find the territories which we 
have already spoken of as the " Old-Frankish lands," with 
the notable exception that, since the Treaty of Verdun, that 
gountry which had probably the purest Frankish population 



c. 900 J 'J^nE FRENCH 'lEKRJTURJJiS. 403 

of all, Lorraine, had been permanently lost to France. The 
earlier distinction of Neustria and Austrasia had also be- 
come obscured by the growth of new political 

North of centres, but it migrht still be employed to 

the Loire. ' ° . 

mark a difference of population, the Neustrian 

country along the middle and lower Seine, being occupied 
mainly by a Gallo-Roman, while the more northern and 
eastern portions were in the hands of an almost purely 
Germanic stock. The very rapid growth of the feudal 
principle had produced here a multitude of petty principali- 
ties, which may, however, politically be considered in a few 
well-defined groups. 

In the farthest north between Scheldt and Somme was a 

group of territories whose fortunes were usually influenced 

by the counts of Flanders. It comprised, 

The Flemish j-^ggi^^gg the county of Flanders itself, those of 
Group. ■' ' 

Artois, Boulogne and Guines. The northernmost 

portion of the inhabitants were Germanic in blood and 

language and were frequently drawn into the politics of the 

empire. The more southern portions were a Franco-Gallic 

mixture, fickle in their political attachments and a source of 

difficulties to the French monarchy throughout all its early 

development. 

South of Flanders we find a second group occupying a 

territory called by the general name of Picardy, though this 

name as that of a political division disappears 
Picardy. . , . ^ . ^ /^ 

very early and gives place to the more famous 

and permanent titles of Vermandois, Valois, Troyes, 

Chartres, Amiens and others. Eastward again, along the 

head waters of the Seine, Marne and Aisne lav 

Champagne. ■' 

the great county of Champagne, connected in 

its political fortunes with the houses of Blois and Verman- 
dois, but maintaining its identity and exercising at times a 
powerful influence in French politics. 



404 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [c. 900 

In the northwest of France along the lower Seine, lay, 

at the close of the Carolingian period, a group of feudal 

lordships, without any common political ties. 
Normandy. 

The most important were the counties of Rouen, 

Bayeux, l^vreux and Seez, each centring about a city which 

carried its origin back into the Roman times. The political 

importance of this region as a whole dates from its infeuda- 

tion as the property of the invading Northmen, 

the price of their alliance and the pledge of their 

entrance into the family of civilized and Christian peoples. 

Still farther to the west, taking in the whole of the great 

Armorican peninsula, was the land of Brittany, 
Brittany. , 1 i- • j . r ' ■ ^^ , ,- • • 

sharply divided irom its neighbors by peculiarities 

of race and tradition. The population was almost purely 

Celtic, little influenced by the Roman occupation, fiercely 

conscious of its identity, passionately attached to its local 

rulers, and resisting as long as possible every attempt to 

bring it under the control of any other power, were it that 

of the dukes of Normandy or of the kings of France. 

Nominally a vassal province of Normandy from the time of 

the first Norman infeudation, it did not become an actual 

part, even of the French kingdom, until the beginning of 

modern times. 

Farther inland, south of Normandy and east of Brittany 

lay a group of lands, dating from the time of Charlemagne 

„ . and havinsf common characteristics of population 

Maine, * ... 

Anjou and and customs which gave them> a political union 

Touraine. during a very long period. The counties of 

Maine, Anjou and Touraine, independent during the tenth 

century, came in the next into the hands of the Angevine 

house and then, through connection with the Norman kings 

of England, were drawn into that series of events which 

formed for both England and France the chief political 

interest of the Middle Ages. 



c. 900] THE HOUSE OF ERA NCI A. 405 

Finally, in the very centre of northern France, we find 

a little group of territories, bounded by the rivers Seine, 

Oise, Aisne and Marne, and called the Isle de 

The Isle France. From these lands as a centre the 

de France. 

power was destined to grow which, by a singu- 
lar steadiness of purpose and a rare capacity for taking 
advantage of circumstances, was to become the actual 
controlling force in French politics. The counts of Paris, 
later called also dukes of France (Frafida), come into 
prominence in the latter part of the ninth century. We 
find one of them, Eudes (Otto), distinguishing himself in 
the famous defense of Paris against the Northmen in 



He was the son of Robert the Strong, whose descent was 
traced from a Saxon ancestor, one, perhaps, of the colonists 
transplanted by Charlemagne to the Prankish territory. 

At the deposition of Charles the Fat in 887 Eudes was 
put forward by the leading nobles of northern France and 
of Bourgogne and crowned early in the following 
88^-?98 y^^^ ^y ^^^ bishop of Sens. This coronation by 

a bishop other than he of Rheims was made one 
of the pretexts for refusing allegiance to Eudes and for 
treating his claim as a rebellious attempt against the 
"legitimate" sovereignty of the Carolingian house. The 
archbishop Foulke of Rheims even went so far as to offer 
to crown Arnulf of Germany as king of the West-Franks, 
but finally gave way and crowned Eudes at Rheims. Eudes 
went over into Germany to Worms and there formally ac- 
knowledged the over-lordship of Arnulf. Within a few 
months Eudes was recognized as king by the whole of 
northern France, and soon the guardians of the Carolingian 
youth, Charles (the Simple) in Aquitaine, fell into line as 
well. 

During the next few years the administration of Eudes 
was continually interrupted by attempts to gain the kingdom 



406 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [923 

for Charles. Foiilke of Rheims was generally the centre of 
these attempts, and at one time got to the point of winning 
for his master the support of the emperor Arnulf. How 
little this signified was shown almost immediately. Arnulf 
summoned the two claimants to come before him for his 
decision, and when Eudes alone answered the summons, 
promptly declared him king. If one compares the monarchy 
of Eudes in France with that of Arnulf or of Conrad I in 
Germany, one fails to perceive any essential difference. In 
each case the king was elected by a fraction of the leading 
fighting men of the country and then gained, by one or 
another means, the nominal allegiance of the rest ; but in 
no case was this allegiance thought of as anything very 
binding. The only noticeable difference was that in Ger- 
many there was no royal tradition about which any sentiment 
of loyalty could gather, while in France the Carolingian rem- 
nant always offered a centre and a pretext for demonstrations 
which were called, according to the point of view, " rebel- 
lions " or '"restorations." 

Eudes maintained himself until his death in 898, and gave 
his parting counsel to his followers, to choose Charles the 
Simple for their king, advice almost precisely 
the Simple, the same as that given by Otto of Saxony about 
898-923. Conrad the Franconian in 911. Again the same 

history of a kingdom resting upon bargains with its subjects. 
The brother of Eudes, Robert, count of Paris, offered his 
support to Charles, and received therefor the title of duke of 
Francia, the gift of several of the richest abbeys, St. 
Denis, St. Germain des Pres, Morienval and the administra- 
tion of most of the country between the Seine and Loire. 
. This estate of the duke of Francia might well be com- 
pared to one of the great eastern marks. Beyond it lay, all 
along the lower Seine, the region so often desolated by the 
Norman invasions, and still unredeemed to civilized life. 



911] SETTLEMENT OE NORMANDY. 407 

New swarms of Norsemen were still, with each returning 
spring, making their way up its rivers, and the govern- 
ment was as powerless as ever to resist them. 
Continued ,,,, . . , . , .- ^ 

Invasion of ^^'^^ experiment oi buymg them on by a perma- 

tlie North- nent grant of land had already been tried with 

success at other points, and now by the advice 

of duke Robert it was applied to the whole great region 

between his own territories and the sea. The leader of the 

most dangerous Norman troops, Rolf or Rollo, accepted the 

proposition of the king and undertook to become at once 

a Christian and his vassal. The story of the time that 

Rollo, called upon to kiss the foot of the king 
Investiture 
of Rollo with accordmg to the Frankish form of homage, 

Normandy. deputed this service to one of his men, and that 

911. 

this merry heathen promptly tipped his sacred 
highness on his back, has nothing in it intrinsically im- 
probable. It illustrates very well the extremes of that con- 
trast between the Roman-Byzantine notion of divine 
kingship and the Germanic idea of an elected military 
leadership, which it is the main purpose of this chapter to 
make clear. The rapid development of Normandy under 
the vigorous and intelligent rule of Rollo shows that what 
France needed was rather force and practical administrative 
skill than any over-anxious care about " legitimate " succes- 
sion to a powerless throne. 

The chief troubles of Charles the Simple's reign may also 
best be understood from the same point of view. The 

Monarchy tradition is that the king's open display of favor- 
vs. itism toward a courtier named Hagano, a 

ris ocracy. LQ^j-^ij^^j- Qf \q^ origin, roused to such a pitch 
the jealousy of the highest princes of the realm that they 
conspired for his overthrow. Under this dramatic form we 
may easily discern the conflict of ideas about the monarchy. 
It is only a king who is independent of his subjects that 



408 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [909 

can afford to rely upon " new men " in his government. 
Nothing, for example, is more striking in the methods of 
king Louis XI in the fifteenth century for getting rid of 
feudal limitations than precisely this trait. If any of his 
nobles objected to his confidences with his barber or his 
hangman, he had ways of getting rid of the offending 
magnate in the quietest and most effective fashion. The 
king of the early tenth century had no such resources. If 
he tried the method of independence he found himself at 
once in conflict with a very stubborn fact, — the actual 
supremacy of the barons. This is the explanation of the 
" revolt " headed by duke Robert of Francia. The barons 
felt their independence threaten<ed by the king and took the 
natural method of protecting themselves. They were not 
inclined to do away with the monarchy ; they proposed to 
manage it. 

The part of the clerical element in this conflict is well 
shown at the local synod of Trosly in the year 909. There 
Th s d were present all the leading clergymen of the 
of Trosly. diocese of Rheims, under the presidency of the 
'* archbishop. Their acts show a condition of 

things extremely depressing from the clerical point of view. 
The chief complaint is of the spoiling of church goods by 
the barons, against which the synod sees no remedy but a 
vigorous support of the king. They call upon Charles to 
assert his divine right and to save the church, and with it 
society in general, from this violence of the laity. If we 
turn the page, however, it will not require any very great 
skill to read in this same document the protest of the lay 
nobility against the absorption of vast amounts of valuable 
land by the church, and their determination not to let this 
go on to the detriment of the commonwealth. However 
much the motive of selfish aggrandizement may have 
dictated the great feudal nobility in their action, it is clear, 



922] INHERITANCE VERSUS FREE ELECTION 409 

historically speaking, that in them lay the only hope of a 

vigorous administration of public affairs. This synod of 

Trosly may profitably be compared with that of Altheim in 

Germany seven years later. There, too, the clergy supported 

the monarchy of Conrad I, and lent its authority to the acts 

of despotic power by which his theory of a kingdom was 

destroyed and the victory of the lay nobility as a body 

secured. 

The outcome in France was that the nobles joined in 

rebellion against Charles the Simple and set up Robert of 

^t. , ^^ Francia as their elected head. The battle of 
Charles the 

Simple de- . Soissons in 923 resulted in the death of Robert, 
posed. 922. 1^^^^ ^jgQ -j^ ^j^g ^Q^^^ ^Qi^2X of Charles. The 

nobles continued their policy by again choosing for their 
king one of their own number, the duke Raoul of Bourgogne, 
a choice approved by Robert's son Hugh, and confirmed by 
the consecration of the bishop of Sens. Comparing this 
election with that of Henry I of Germany in the year follow- 
ing we find no essential differences. In both cases there 
were those who brought forward against the election prior- 
claims of persons whom a well-defined royal tradition would 
have pointed out as the natural candidates ; in both cases 
the inherent right of the "princes" to choose whom they 
pleased was asserted and maintained. The tradition brings 
into the account of both elections stories of magnanimous 
self-denial on the part of leaders who might well have 
claimed the crown for themselves. 

The reign of Raoul of Bourgogne, almost precisely conter- 
minous with that of Henry I in Germany, has also a char- 

acter almost exactly the same. In each countrv 
Kmg: Raoul, r ^ 

the Burgun- we find a multitude of local territorial powers, 

^^^^ each jealous of the other and all jealous of the 

king whose election they have approved and 

whose authority they are willing to acknowledge, so long as 



410 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [c. 950 

he does not interfere with their own free development. In 
France the existence of the deposed king Charles forms 
a natural centre for '-'rebellions" until his death in 929 
relieves the new monarchy of this source of anxiety. His 
son Louis, living in England at the court of his uncle, king 
Athelstan, was at the moment too young to attract a party 
to himself. The part played in German politics by the 
pressure of the Slav and the Hungarian on the east was 
taken in France by the still active groups of Norsemen 
settled along the lower courses of the western rivers, who 
from time to time repeated the history of the ninth century 
raids and were drawn into the wars of the princes by one 
and another party as suited its momentary interest. The 
same evil repute that attached to king Arnulf for his alliance 
with the Hungarians, fell also upon Charles the Simple for 
a similar compact with the Norsemen, 

At first glance the political situation seems little short of 

anarchy, and if anarchy be the absence of well-defined 

constitutional principles according to which the 

The Capetian ji^g^sures of the hour may be determined, then 

lltlA.6S Rt Xil6 

Centre of on both sides of the Rhine we have equally a 
French period of anarchy. But if, as was here the case, 

we see underneath the struggles of immediate 
ambition a great principle working itself out into distinct 
institutions, then apparent anarchy becomes only a transi- 
tion from an earlier to a later organization of society. As 
regards French history especially, the phraseology of most 
historians has tended to give quite false ideas as to the real 
state of affairs. The final success of the legitimate principle 
in France has caused historical writers to represent the 
struggles of this period as a conscious warfare of a sacred 
royal house with a succession of "pretenders," who have 
basely "rebelled" against the divine right of the "successors 
of Clovis." A more exact statement would be that the 



954] DECLINE OF CAROLEXGIAN POWER. 411 

actual forces of a new order were shaping themselves in 
conflict with a worn-out tradition. The centre of this move- 
ment is to be found in the steady policy of the dukes of 
Francia. KX the death of Raoul without heirs Hugh, son of 
Robert, declared himself ready to support the young Louis 
(d'Outremer), son of Charles the Simple. The princes 
agreed, and word was sent over into England that the "lad 
might return, and, if he were able, succeed to the doubtful 
honor of the French crown. The comparison with Germany 
fails us here, because this Carolingian youth was almost 
literally a king without a roof over his head. He did not, 
like the leading princes in both countries, stand for a terri- 
tory with which his family had been identified ; his only 
hope was in the fidelity of supporters whose allegiance must 
be bought by continual favoring of one against another and 
in the loyalty of a clergy, which looked to him to defend it 
against the encroachments of its lay colleagues. 

For eighteen years the French monarchy was in the hands 
of this capable, vigorous and well-meaning person, who, 

however, in the face of overwhelming odds, suc- 
Tlie Reign of , , . , . , . , r • xx 

Louis IV ceeded m makmg notmng whatever or it. He 

(d'Outremer). ^as equally unable to face the raids of the 

936-954. 

Norsemen from the west and those of the Hun- 
garians from the east. He could not for a moment count 
upon any one of the princes who had sworn to support him. 
His marriage alliance with the sister of Otto I was balanced 
by the marriage of Hugh of Francia with another sister. 
The German king lent himself now to one and now to the 
other of his brothers-in-law, as his own interest for the 
moment demanded. There is nothing in his dealings with 
them to show that the accident of the kingship of one made 
the slightest difference in any particular. Otto himself was 
occupied, during the whole early part of his reign with pre- 
cisely similar conflicts in Germany ; but when Louis died in 



412 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [954-986 

954, leaving to his widow and children no inheritance but a 
series of quarrels and an empty treasury, Otto had already 
succeeded in getting that hold upon the allegiance of his 
subjects which was to enable him in the following year to 
throw the ^diole weight of the German arms against the 
invading Hungarians at Augsburg, and soon to carry the 
German kingdom into Italy as the only savior of the largest 
interests of western Christianity. 

The same general description answers for the reign of 
Louis' son Lothair, which filled the space of a generation of 

Th R ■ f ^^^^' ^^^^ ^^^^ ^"^ "^^ country only the record of 
King: Lothair. incessant struggle to give the Carolingian king- 
954-986. dom a territorial basis which might enable it to 

make head against the actual power of the feudal nobility. 
The most interesting element in this conflict is the effort of 
Lothair to make the utmost use of his connection with the 
eastern kingdom. At first by way of alliance he tried to use 
it as a makeweight against Hugh of Francia, and then, 
profiting by the rebellion of the leading men in Lorraine, he 
made a valiant eft'ort to capture that province and reunite it 
to the landless crown of France. This attempt went so far 
that he actually got into Lorraine and drove king Otto II 
out of Aachen in all haste. Otto's reply was an immediate 
declaration of war, and thereupon, within a few months, an 
expedition, at the head of at least thirty thousand men, into 
the heart of the western kingdom. But, after all, this, too, 
was a mere display of bravado. Otto led his army to the 
gates of Paris, and the West- Franks shut themselves up in 
the city. After a long exchange of bragging messages, the 
invaders set out for home and got on well enough until in 
crossing a river a part of their force was cut oil by a sudden 
flood and fell a prey to their cautious pursuers. 

In fact this is the usual character of what passes in the 
chronicles of the period for war. It is almost never that we 



9S7] HUGH CAPET. 413 

read of actual fighting in the open field, and for really great 
and well-defined issues. Only one thing becomes tolerably 
clear : that the princes of northern France were not inclined 
to favor a foreign invader, nor to admit for a moment the 
possibility that their land might become an integral part of 
the Germanized empire. Their chief, Hugh Capet, allied 
himself in this extremity with the French king, entered Paris 
with him and lent him his aid in the pursuit of the retreating 

emperor. Lothair died in the year 986. His 
986-987* ^^"^ Louis succeedcd without opposition to his 

empty honors, but survived him only a little more 
than a year. The quality of these last three Carolingian 
kings in France was decidedly above that of the average 
mediaeval ruler. They were all men of energy, attractive, 
knightly figures, engaged from first to last in a hopeless 
conflict with powers they could not control and with which 
they would not make terms. The time for kingdoms with- 
out power was gone, and the time for a new order, resting 
upon actual resources in men and money, was come. 

Such is, unquestionably, the historical meaning of the 
monarchy of Hugh Capet. At the death of Louis V the 
ThePolitial oppo^^unity was open as never before for the 
Situation in holders of the actual power in France to declare 

987 

themselves as to the principles by which they 
would be governed. So far as " legitimacy " was concerned 
there was no claimant who had any strong hold upon any 
element of the nation. The only capable representative of 
the Carolingians was Charles, duke of lower Lorraine, a 
vassal, therefore, of the German king. This foreign con- 
nection was decidedly against him at the time, as was also 
the fact that he had set himself iji opposition to ail those 
tendencies towards feudal independence which were giving 
character to politics everywhere. The feudal princes feared 
him, while on the other hand they saw in Hugh of Francia 



414 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [987 

a man who had come up in the world like themselves as the 
head of a great landed property, and was, also like them- 
selves; so bound up with the maintenance of the feudal 
principle that he would be unlikely to work against it. We 
instinctively ask the question at this crisis, why the princes 
of France should have cared to go through the formality of 
choosing a king at all. Why could they not have gone on, 
each for himself, securing their mutual rights by some form 
of federation and escaping, once for all, the dangers with 
which any active monarchy must threaten them ? The 
answer is probably to be found in the necessities of the 
feudal principle itself. The relation of every vassal to his 
lord was, so to speak, guaranteed by the existence of a 
snnilar relation of that lord to the king. The monarchy was 
the essential key-stone to the feudal structure, which was 
shaky enough at best, and, without some such binding ele- 
ment, was in constant danger of going to pieces by its own 
weight.-^ 

The chief requirement for a king under these conditions 
was that he should be strong, but not too strong, above all 
El ti f ^^^^ ^^ should be in sympathy with, not hostile 
Hug:li Capet, to, the institution over which he was to preside. 
987. These conditions seemed to be united in Hugh 

Capet. He was himself lord of a large territory; he was 
joined by family ties to the chief princes of the land, to the 
duke of Normandy, the dukes of Aquitaine and Burgundy, 
the count of Vermandois. He had shown himself a good 
friend of the church, though, like all the rest, he had not 
scrupled to take church property into his hands, and was 

1 I cannot agree with the statement of A. Rambaud that there was 
never such a thing as a feudal monarchy. Feudalism without a mon- 
archy adapted to its forms would have ceased to be feudalism, and 
would have become a mere federation of independent princes without a 
distinct political character. 



987] THE CAPETIAN MONARCHY. 415 

in his own person, abbot of more than one rich monastery. 
The head of the clergy of northern France, the archbishop 
Adalberon of Rheims, became the leader of Hugh's party. 
At an assembly of their partisans at Senlis, he declared, as 
the basis of all further proceedings, that the throne did not 
pass by inheritance, but that the proper personal qualities 
must be present in the man who should be king. Such 
qualities were, he said, united in Hugh of Francia, who 
would not only defend the state as a whole but would insure 
to each one the honors and privileges which were his due. 
Upon this basis Hugh was declared elected, and was crowned 
by Adalberon at Rheims on the 3d of July, 987. Before his 
election Hugh had promised the clergy that he would 
respect their privileges in every particular. The most im- 
portant pledge of his sincerity in this matter was his resig- 
nation of the lay abbacies, which had been accumulated in 
his family, with the single exception of St. Martin at Tours. 
The influence of the Cluny reform cannot fail to be seen in 
this very significant act. 

In trying to understand the very complicated question of 
the development of the Capetian monarchy, it is important 

to remember that the kino^ had throup:hout a 
Double ^ ^ 

Character of double character. He was the apex of the feudal 

the Capetian pyramid, and as such stood to all the members 
Monarchy. r ^ r ^ ^ 

of the feudal body in the relation of suzerain. 

The usual accounts of the new kingdom are apt to stop 

here and to leave out of sight the other equally important 

fact that the king was not only a suzeraiii but also a sovereign^ 

i.e., that in spite of the vast predominance of the feudal 

notion there was always, going along with it, the other, earlier 

and simpler conception of the king as the divine being, the 

source of law and justice, invested with a peculiar religious 

character and raised above the limitations of ordinary human 

life by virtue of the sanctity of his royal commission. If we 



416 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [987 

call the first of these conceptions the ''feudal," we may call 
the other the " ecclesiastical and popular." Whenever the 
monarchy found itself too hard pressed by the actual facts 
of a feudally organized society, it threw itself upon the 
church and the "people," and seldom without finding there 
the support it needed. If we are reminded that the clergy 
itself was feudalized, so that its interests were often 
hopelessly tied up with those of the feudal aristocracy, 
we have to consider that the clerical institution also held 
within itself an ideal of something divine, />., permanent, 
which, through all its corrupting worldliness, was never 
lost sight of. 

The history of the Capetian mionarchy is the record of a 
continual struggle between these two ideas of the king as 

suzerain and the king as sovereign. In the 
"S^ ^^tiT '' former capacity he could deal directly only with 
vs. the the members of the feudal hierarchy; in the latter 

^ ing- as ^^ j^g dealt directly with all the inhabitants of the 

kingdom. As suzerain he had only vassals ; as 
sovereign he had also "subjects." Now the problem of the 
monarchy was steadily to make the element of sovereignty 
gain upon that of suzerainty. During the whole strictly 
mediaeval period this gain was slight, but what there was of 
it was solid. The hold of the monarchy in France was so 
strengthened that towards the close of our period, and more 
especially in that just following, it was able to make the 
most vigorous assertions of its right, and to carry them 
through in the face of all the obstacles which the declining 
feudalism of the succeeding centuries could bring to bear 
against it. If we limit our view to those outward events 
which chiefly attract the attention of the annalist, the 
Capetian monarchy during the first two centuries of its 
existence seems hardly more than the caricature of a royal 
power. It had far less land, and less of those resources 



987] THE MONARCHICAL PRINCIPLE. 417 

of men and money that go with land, than several of its 
vassal principalities. The great achievements that brought 
glory to the French name in this period were none of them 
directly connected with the monarchy. The conquest of 
England, the settlement of southern Italy, the leadership in 
the crusades and the control of the conquered lands in 
Syria, were the work of Frenchmen, but the monarchy 
entered only secondarily into either the process or the 
results. The same may be said of the greater triumphs of 
peaceful life. The movement for social reform proceeding 
from the monastery of Cluny, the great intellectual develop- 
ment gathering around the University of Paris, the splendid 
achievements of the "Gothic" architecture, the rise of a 
new literature of the vulgar tongue in the south, all of these 
had gone forward without any of the fostering which the 
monarchies of an earlier and of a later date had reckoned 
among their chief obligations. 

Yet it is hardly too much to say that the foundations for 
the future greatness of the French monarchy, the most 

effective of all the later European sovereignties, 
Process of . . 

Strengthen- were laid broad and deep during precisely this 

ing the period. The process by which this advance was 

Monarchy. . 

accomplished may be traced chiefly along three 

lines: i, the heredity of the crown ; 2, the principle of pri- 
mogeniture ; 3, the indivisibility and gradual increase of the 
royal domain. As regards the succession, there was no 
more certainty in France than in Germany. It could not be 
said that an hereditary principle was fixed, and yet from the 
Merovingian times down it had been the frequent custom 
for the reigning king to associate with himself in his lifetime 
the son whom he wished to succeed him, and the approval 
of the princes to this association had generally been regarded 
by them as an obligation to support the son when his time 
came. It was therefore in pursuance of an ancient Frankish 



418 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [9S7-996 

custom, observed in Germany as well, that Hugh Capet 

secured the approval of his vassals to the succession of his 

son Robert, and thus set an example which was regularly 

followed for almost two centuries. By the time of Philip 

Augustus the tradition had become so firmly established 

that he did not take the precaution to associate his son, who, 

nevertheless, succeeded without opposition. The Capetian 

line had the rare good fortune that during three hundred 

and forty-one years the reigning king never failed to have a 

son ready to succeed him. 

The principle of primogeniture is by no means a necessary 

condition of an hereditar}' kingdom. The ruinous practice 

of a partition among sons had clung with fatal 
The Establish- . , 1 1 • • 1 1 . i 

ment of tenacity to the hereditary idea under the 

Primogeni- Merovingian and Carolingian kings, but by the 

time of the Capetians there was no longer any 

thought of this. The only question was, how should the 

successor be selected from among several sons? It arose 

for the first time during the reign of Robert II, and was 

hotly debated by the family and the advisers of the king. 

The result was the choice of the elder and the establishment 

of a precedent from which no departure was afterward 

made. The value of this principle to the ruling house was 

that it avoided the kind of conflicts which, under feudal 

conditions, always gave a pretext for combinations against 

the universally dreaded royal power. 

In the development of the royal domain we see the best 

illustration of the clearness and tenacity of purpose which 

were the distinguishing marks of the family of 

DomS Francia. At the coming of Hugh Capet, there 

under Hug-h ^^as practically nothing that could be called a 

^^^ * royal property, from which revenue could be 

drawn for the support of the crown as such. The last 

Carolingians had been so destitute ihat they had been called 



1055] PRIMOGENITURE. — ROYAL DOMAIN. 419 

in derision "kings of Laon." It was evident, therefore, 
that the new king would have to depend wholly upon the 
resources of the property which he held as duke of Francia 
or by whatever other title. It was a personal property, and 
would become royal only in case it could pass from king to 
king by the ordinary process of feudal inheritance. A rash 
king would have staked his fortune on the chances of con- 
quest and probably would have lost. Hugh was satisfied 
to keep what he had and to take the ordinary feudal chances 
of a gradual increase. Precisely what his domain included 
is a matter of great uncertainty. It is clear that he and his 
immediate successors had comparatively small resources for 
instant use and played a far less prominent part in political 
life than his immediate predecessors had done. Their 
prestige, such as it was, rested upon their possession of the 
royal title with its ecclesiastical and popular associations. 
This element becomes especially clear in the case of Hugh's 
son, the "pious" Robert (996-1031). His actual power 
was next to ////, but his sovereignty was unquestioned and 
his figure as that of a typical mediaeval king is very 
distinct. 

The first notable increase of the royal domain took place 
in 1055, when king Henry I annexed the county of Sens 
on the death of its feudal owner, and kept it 
the^o^i in his own hands. Several other annexations 
Domain. made by the same king were given out again to 

1031-1060. ^^^ tenants. The continual struggles of Henry 
I with William of Normandy may be regarded as 
evidence of an intention to increase the domain towards the 
northwest, an intention totally defeated bv the superior 
power of the Norman duke. 

Under Philip 1 the siime effort went on in all directions. 
Towards Normandy Philip got possession of the Vexin, 
whose lord, Simon of Yalois, had become a monk. A 



420 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [1137 

great part of the county of Vermandois, with the title, came 
into his hands by the death of the count, and was given 

out again in iief to the king's brother Hugh. 
f^o^-nos These gains helped to consolidate the Capetian 

lands in the Isle de France ; beyond the Loire 
the purchase of the city and territory of Bourges gave a 
nucleus for future growth of the domain in the south. 

The reign of Louis VI (le Gros) marks a decided increase 
of vigor in the royal policy. He was constantly on the 

alert to take advantage of every opportunity to 
II08-II37 convert his relation of suzerainty (over-lordship) 

into that of sovereignty (direct lordship), and no 
matter how small the territory thus gained, the power of the 
king as a direct landholder was by so much increased. The 
king entered fully into the working of the feudal principle at 
the time of its greatest height, and profited by it. By this 
process the royal power planted itself as a landed proprietor 
at numerous points of vantage, consolidated territory where 
it could, and trusted to the future for a chance to unite these 
petty holdings into one grand territorial complex. The most 
brilliant expansion of the Capetian house since its accession 
to the crown was the marriage of the prince royal, Louis 
(VII), to Eleanor, heiress of the great duchy of Aquitaine. 
The royal power seemed thereby to be immensely increased, 
but, in fact, this distant and turbulent vassal state proved a 
far less valuable acquisition than the numerous smaller 
holdings on which the grasp of the king was permanently 
and solidly fixed. The divorce of Louis VII, averted during 
his father's lifetime by the skillful policy of Suger, set free 
once more the Aquitanian duchy and allowed it to b'e united 
to the inveterate enemy of France, the Norm:;un state of 
England. >' • 

The marriage of Eleanor with Hei^j-y Plantagenet of Anjou 
and Maine, heir to the English thr-^ne, created a combina- 



1240] KOYAL DOMAIN. 421 

lion of territories which formed nothing less than a new 
state, overwhehiiingly greater than even the nominal posses- 
sions of the Capetian king. In the almost entire 

Check to e ^j-jsg^ce of any limits of nationality, there was 
King: by the ^ ■' ' 

Ang-evine- no good reason why the future development of 

Aguitanian France and England should not take place alone 
Marriage. ° ^ & 

a north and south line of division as well as any 
other. The hope for France was that the feudal principle 
of easy dismemberment would work within this new Anglo- 
Norman- Angevine-Aquitanian state as it was working within 
the state of France. This hope was realized under the 
son and successor of Louis VII, Philip Augustus, the first 
king of France in anything like the later sense of that 
word. 

The Norman and Angevine lands had been recognized as 
fiefs, held by England of the French crown, but were 

declared by a court of peers forfeited, either on 
Annexation 
of Normandy, account of the alleged murder of the young Arthur 

Anjou and of Brittany by kine John, or as penalty for his 
Maine. . , . ^ r i i / •, i , 

violation 01 leudal duty, and thus came under the 

direct lordship of the French king. Philip Augustus was 
strong enough to make good this judicial decree by force of 
arms, and in 1205 made Normandy a part of his domain. 
In 1258 it was definitely given up by Henry III of England. 
With Normandy came also Maine and Anjou and part of 
Poitou, territories of great importance in binding together 
the northern and southern provinces. Brittany also, the 
remote Celtic northwest province of Gaul, followed in theory 
the feudal fortunes of Normandy, but it was to be centuries 
yet before the hold of the royal power there was to be any- 
thing more than nominal. Philip Augustus had received 

with his wife, Isabella of Hainault (Henneeau), 

Artois. 1 T r 1 V fe y 

daughter of the count of Flanders, the county of 

Artois, and handed this on as a family property to his son, 



422 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. [r3i4 

Louis VIII. The county of Auvergne, a subject territory 

of the counts of Toulouse, was taken in war by 

Auvergfne. . ^ 

Phihp Augustus and used by his grandson Louis 

IX as a provision for his brother Alfonse (1241). The 

same disposal was made of the county of Poitou, 
Poitou. T . , , M- 

which came to Philip Augustus m 1204 as a part 

of the forfeitures of king John. This same Alfonse married 

(1249) a daughter of the unfortunate count Raymond VII 

of Toulouse, whose territories, sadly diminished 
Toulouse. . . . ■^ 

it is true by the Albi2:ensian wars, came thus 

into Capetian hands. At the death of Alfonse, without 
heirs, in 127 1 all these southern territories, Toulouse, 
Poitou and Auvergne, fell to the royal domain. Other ac- 
quisitions made by Louis IX (1226— 1270) were Carcassonne, 
Beziers, Nismes and Macon in the south, and the counties 
of Perche, Blois, Chartres, Sancerre in the north. Under 
Philip III (1270-1285), by the marriage of his son 
Champagne Philip IV (1285-13 14) with Jeanne, heiress of 
an rie. Champagne and Brie, and queen of Navarre, all 
these territories became parts of the domain. 

Thus, by the close of our period, the Capetian kings had 
come to be rulers, by virtue of direct lordship, over terri- 
tories, not always closely adjoining each other, but forming, 
by their vast extent and favorable strategic positions, an 
overwhelming balance against any feudal combination likely 
to be attempted.- From this time on the danger to the 

n.^ ^r^ ^ French crown is no longer chiefly in feudal re- 

The French . . 

Monarchy bellion, but in the antagonism of its great national 

Complete. x'wA across the channel — an antagonism des- 
tined to bring out into vigorous self-consciousness all the 
forces of the French nationality itself. This acquisition of 
a family territory, held by the king independently of feudal 
control, was beyond all question the great lever of the 
monarchy in working against all political interests which 



THE ROYAL ADMINISTRATION. 423 

could in any way conflict with its own. The regular suc- 
cession of rulers, — the son following the father, — the great 
length of the several reigns, the absence of strong local 
attachment in the provinces, even the very essential quali- 
ties of the feudal system itself — all helped to consolidate 
the Capetian interests into a force which was in time to 
prove itself irresistible. We have now to notice, still fol- 
lowing the distinction between sovereignty and suzerainty, 
some of the other incidents of this vast development. The 
greater part of the material resources of the monarchy will 
be found enumerated in the chapter on the feudal institu- 
tions. They are there treated as incidental to the structure 
of the feudal system as a whole. Our present business is 
to notice more especially the machinery of government by 
which the monarchy maintained itself through the time of 
its almost total eclipse, and which it thus found ready to its 
hand when the time to assert itself had come. 

Like every other mediaeval prince, the king administered 
his affairs through a body of officials, known then, as they 

have been ever since, as his fnimstri, or ministe- 
of the^Royal riales,^ i.e., servants, personally attached to him, 
Adminis- usually, of course, as vassals, but not primarily 

as such. Originally menials, their close relation 
to the person of the king served to give them a dignity and 
an influence above those of the ordinary vassal. They 
appear with increasing frequency, as the period advances, 
as the regular associates of the king in his pubUc acts. 
Especially the chancellor becomes the usual medium of 
his legislative action, while the seneschal grows as the 

administrative head of affairs until he becomes 

The Royal almost a danofer to the state. From the earliest 
Council. * 

times it had been the theory of the Germanic 

state that the acts of the king were issued in conformity 

1 See pj). IIO-II2. 



424 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

with the will of the "people," i.e., of the able-bodied fighting 
men. Under the feudal arrangements this theory was con- 
tinued ; the consent of those on whom he must rely for the 
execution of his plans was essential to the validity of the 
king's slightest action. Out of this necessity was developed 
the royal council — on the one hand a check on the king by 
bringing all his actions under the scrutiny of many other 
persons ; on the other hand a defense to him against the 
irregular and unorganized opposition of the independent 
nobility as a whole. These officials were known, all together, 
as the /c?/^////// — a name expressing their close connection 
with the king's person. They were appointed by him, 
looked to him for employment and advancement, and served 
him as agents in every attempt to make his authority 
something more than a name. In the early stages of the 
Capetian monarchy the /^^A?///// were generally selected from 
among the higher feudal nobility. Gradually, however, as 
the antagonism became more acute, they were taken more 
and more from the ranks of the lower gentry and clergy, in 
order that they might the more effectively be used against 
the dangerous feudal rivals of the crown. It is through the 
continuance of this policy that the counselors of the king 
came to be purely the instruments of his pleasure, like the 
lawyers of Philip IV and his successors in the fourteenth 
century, and the barbers and hangmen of Louis XI in the 
fifteenth. 

The difficulties of the king, as sovereign, in resisting the 

feudal pressure become still more clear as we study his 

efforts to enforce authority outside the limits of 

Central with ^^is domain. We may well remind ourselves here 

the Local Ad- once more of the way in which Charlemagne had 
ministration. 

faced the same problem, and what form it had 

taken under his successors. He had tried to combine the 

two notions of central and provincial administration by 



THE\ ROYAL ADMINISTRATION, 425 

putting the government of his provinces into the hands of 
royal officials, — the comites of the king, — created by him 
and responsible to him. But the force of the feudal devel- 
opment had completely overturned this theory ; the counts 
ceased to be central officials, and became local chiefs, bound 
to the centre only by the loose feudal tie. In the effort of 
the Capetians to become once more effectively kings of at 
least a part of Charlemagne's territory, this earlier condition 
of a responsible centralized body of royal officials was to be 
restored. For the present, the two notions of officials and 
vassals were, almost hopelessly confused. If the king 
ordered one of his great vassals to do a thing — as, for 
instance, to defend a certain abbey or to punish a certain 
delinquent — he could expect obedience only if it was quite 
convenient for the vassal. Cases of such demands are, in 
fact, rare before the year 1200.^ The kings' best hold 

durino: this early time was upon the bishops and 
Churclinien . 

as Royal abbots ^ — especially upon those whose endow- 

^^^ ^' ments came from the kings themselves. These 

great prelates, drawn naturally to the king by the attraction 

of his semi-sacred character, and by the common danger 

from feudal encroachment, became the nearest thing there 

was to regular royal officials, without definitely holding 

office under specific titles. 

From the time of Henry I, however, we get clear traces 

of a new personage, destined to become for a long period 

the central figure in the local administration of 

-^ , ^^^ the crown lands. This is the prevbt. an officer 
of Prevot, ^ ' 

placed in a given locality to represent the king 
as judge and tax-collector. It is curious to notice how once 
more the old danger reappeared. How were these persons 
to be paid ? According to all feudal precedent this could 
be done only by giving them a fief with revenues attached 

1 See, for illustration, Luchaire, Institictions, I, p. 208. 



426 CKOlVrn OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

to it. Either this lief must be in land, in which case the 

prevot was pretty sure to become a local resident, and so an 

^j independent person, or the office itself with its 

becoming- fees and perquisites must be treated as a fief. 

ea ize . ^^ either case it was almost certain to claim the 
hereditary character, and, in so far as it did this, it drifted 
away from the sole control of the king. In short, it was, 
until nearly 1200, next to impossible for the crown to hold 
on to the notion of a working- official body which should not 
be drawn into the all-devouring feudal vortex. . The primary 
Th P 'v6t <^^^^ties of the pre'vot were the collection of the 
as Tax- royal revenue and the administration of the 

ec or. royal justice. The chief sources of revenue are 
described in the chapter on the feudal institutions. As 
time went on the tendency was continually gaining, to con- 
vert the numerous forms of feudal obligation into money 
payments, and as this went on the importance of the 
pre'votal office increased in proportion. 

The judicial functions of the pre'vot came from the theory 
of the king as the final source of all justice. They included 

every kind of activity from the jurisdiction over 

As Judge. ^/ • -1 • • 1 \ 1 r 

petty civil or criminal cases up to appeals trom 

the tardy or faulty justice of the barons. Under this head 

comes also a function so familiar to us that we seldom think 

of it, but, in the Middle Ages everywhere perhaps the most 

difficult of all, namely, the police. What seems 

A?^^*^^ to us the prime necessitv of life and the normal 
of the Peace. ^ 

condition of civilized society, the security of the 
streets and highways, was then altogether exceptional. To 
maintain this security was, in a vague way, thought of as one of 
the specific duties of the king. Naturally, it was very irregu- 
larly and ineffectually performed, but it is worth our notice 
as perhaps the best entering wedge of the royal authority 
whenever the king had the will and the power to drive it in. 



THE PRKVOT. 427 

That much effective work was done by the prevotal body 

is proved by the numerous complaints of the feudal persons, 

especially the church foundations, against which 
Aggression xr j ' o 

of the Royal they had made aggressions. They oppressed 
Agents. ^j^g feudal holders ; but it is not clear that this 

oppression was always to the advantage of the king. Very 
often the pre'vot was really lining his own nest under the 
pretense of doing his duty towards his master. The evident 
source of much of this maladministration was the vicious 
system of "farming" the revenue, by which the prevot paid 
a lump sum into the public treasury and then paid himself 
out of the country at discretion. Many charters of the 
twelfth century show that the king was forced to take action 
and to assure the inhabitants of many important towns 
against the aggression of his own agents. Such charters 
were given also in great numbers to churches and monas- 
teries, going so far as to exempt the foundation entirely 
from royal interference. Such restrictions upon the royal 
ofhcials must be regarded as an effort to hold the proper 
balance between the ideas of feudal independence and of 
royal supremacy. 

The great advance in the royal power by the time of 
Philip Augustus is nowhere so clearly to be seen as pre- 
The Bairn cisely along this line of the royal officials. It 
supplant the had become clear that the pre'vots as the sole 
representatives of the crown had had their day. 
They, like all earlier royal officers, had taken on a feudal 
character, and, if any effective protest was to be made, it 
must be by creating a new set of officials whose attachment 
to the crown could be secured by some means hitherto 
untried. This is the origin of the bailli, the local royal 
agent who was to carry the pretensions of the crown to 
a complete triumph. The name was old, but the func- 
tions, as defined by the famous edict of 1190, were new and 



428 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

capable of almost indefinite expansion. This edict was 

published on the eve of the king's departure for the Holy 

Adminlstra- Land. A bailli was to be appointed in every 

tive' Edict important district of the domain as supervisor 
ofPhiUp ... , , . ^ ,. . ^ 

Augustus. over all the prevots of that district. He was to 

II90. appoint four good men in each prevbte and to do 

nothing without the consent of at least two of them. In 
case of need he might summarily remove the prevots, and in 
any case should report to the king any delinquency in their 
administrations. He was to hold court monthly in his dis- 
trict, and three times a year to report to the king's regents 
at Paris the results of these local sessions. At the begin- 
ning of Beaumanoir's treatise on the customs of the territory 
of Beauvais, written in the latter part of the thirteenth cen- 
tury, we have an elaborate description of the ideal bailli. 
Beaumanoir was himself a bailli, and, if we might accept his 
description, no human virtue was too lofty for the adminis- 
tration of so important a trust. He enumerates ten different 
qualities, each indispensable, beginning with wisdom and 
ending with loyalty. Yet, finally, he sums up all in these 
two and especially in loyalty, without which all the rest, even 
wisdom, may be rather dangerous than desirable. 

Beaumanoir's picture of the ideal bailli was probably as 
seldom realized as ideal pictures of public officials in church 

or state have ever been. The interesting thing 
Restrictions ■, ^ • i • • i 

onthelnde- about this new governmental experiment is that 

pendence of instead of waiting for the inevitable evils of it 

to declare themselves the king profited by the 

lessons of all time to anticipate them. We are once more 

reminded of Charlemagne in the restrictions laid upon the 

baillis to keep them always in close touch with the king and 

as little as possible identified with the districts in which 

they served. There seems to have been no such thing as 

a permanent bailli for a given district ; the man was made 



THE BAILLI. 429 

bailli and then was assigned from time to time to any 
district where his services might be needed. He was for- 
bidden to marry or to acquire property in the district ; he 
must make to the king frequent and regular returns of his 
action ; at the close of his term in a given district he must 
remain there long enough to give the inhabitants a chance 
to complain of any aggression. The bailli was almost the 
first public ofiicial in modern times to receive a regular 
money payment for his services, and in view of this he was 
strictly forbidden to receive any compensation from the 
people of the district, and also to make any presents to 
those above him at the court, from whom he might hope for 
advantage. The principle of selfishness was appealed to by 
making the advancement of the bailli in the official world 
depend upon his fidelity to the interests of the king. 

All this seems so simple that one wonders at first why 
every king had not done the same. The answer is to be 

found in our whole study of mediaeval conditions. 
tiie\e^ ° Until now the one essential to any such efi^ective 
Royal administration, a landed property from which 

tration^~ ^^^ king could draw men and money, had been 

wanting. Now, especially after the great acqui- 
sitions of Philip Augustus, such a property was secured and 
the only question was whether the king could dispose of its 
resources at his pleasure. The result shows that his new 
machinery did actually work. In fact the only trouble 
seems to have been that the baillis served him only too well, 
so that repeatedly the king who profited by their zeal had to 
disown their acts and even to discipline them for oppressing 
his good subjects. The practical result was, that by means 
of a more careful administration and a not over-nice sense 
of honor in financial matters, the king was soon able to dis- 
pense to a very great extent with the slippery feudal service 
and to employ in all lesser affairs a body of trained and 



430 GROWTH OF THE FRENCH MONARCHY. 

paid soldiers who looked to him alone for their profit and 
advancement. Prestige gained in this way drew to the king- 
continually more and more of the shifting loyalty of the 
feudal powers. The first great political demonstration of 
the new monarchy is at the battle of Bouvines, where Philip 
Augustus appears as the actual head of a great financial 
and military organization, such as no other state of Europe 
at the time could show. 

It remains to speak briefly of one function of the royal 
power, which more than any other, perhaps, seems to us 
Legislative essential to the very idea of the monarchy, the 
Power of the power to make laws. Yet it will not surprise us 
y. after our previous study of mediaeval conditions 
to find that this function was almost wholly wanting to the 
mediaeval monarch. More than this, the very notion of 
making laws was foreign to mediaeval ideas. A law was 
not a thing to be made; it was there as a part of the national 
or the racial possession, and the only thing to be provided 
for was, its proper interpretation and administration. 
Charlemagne had made laws, because he had brought about 
new conditions, to which the old law did not apply, but from 
his time until the close of our period there was next to no 
legislation, in that sense, in all Europe. When, therefore, 
we speak of the king as legislator we are not to think of him 
as producing new laws, but only as acting within the limits 
of law actuall}^ existing. If, as was from time to time the 
case, the conditions of public or private life required some 
new interpretation of law, such changes were met legally by 
the decisions of courts, and these were then taken as prece- 
dents and became law without any *' legislative " action 
on the part of any one. Whatever may have been the theory 
of those who liked to emphasize the sacred character of the 
king as the fountain of all good things for his grateful peo- 
ple, in fact he never acted independently. No royal edict 



THE CURIA REGIS. 431 

was valid except with the approval of somebody. Originally 

the approving body was the general assembly of the chief 

personages of the state, both lay and clerical. 
Limited by o i • 

Popular Such assemblages were, as we saw, in the time of 

Represen- Charlemagne and regularly thereafter, made up 
of both clergymen and laymen, and dealt with 
political and religious matters indifferently. It is impossible 
to distinguish clearly at any time between a "synod" and a 
" diet." At the former it was the clergymen who took the 
leading part, and the subjects chiefly discussed related to 
the field of religion ; but we find barons of every sort 
present, expressing their opinion and influencing the result. 
So at the diet, '•'' placituin^''' or by whatever other name it 
might be called, it was chiefly laymen who dictated the 
course of affairs, but clergymen were also there and had 
what weight in the decision they might. To carry this point 
one step further, no person called upon in the Middle Ages 
to give a judicial decision was expected or suffered to give 
it alone. The judge, of whatever order, was only the mouth- 
piece or the president of a body of representatives of the 
community, a something like our modern jury, which aided 
him in finding the verdict. 

These same limitations surrounded the king, and no 
French monarch, during this whole long period of gradually 
increasing independence, ever thought of trying 
Regis "^"^ ^° escape them. The only change was that with 
the course of time the number of the persons 
forming the limiting assemblies grew smaller and smaller, 
and came to be determined by more regular practice. We 
have already spoken of the palatini, partly officials of the 
king and partly members of the feudal aristocracy, who 
attached themselves to the person of the king for what they 
could get, and came to be identified with his personal, indi- 
vidual activity as ruler. The vague term palatini becomes 



432 GROWTH OF THE FREXCH MOXARCHY. 

more definite under the form of the curia regis, the 
representative in ordinary times of the old authority of the 
general assembly. Its functions extended to the confirma- 
tion of the king's public acts and judicial decisions, and 
some of its members — if we may use the word '' member" 
of so vague a corporation — were the king's agents in the 
collection of his revenues. At the close of our period the 
curia regis was broken up according to its administrative 
functions, and out of it were evolved three permanent insti- 
tutions, the Parlement, the King's Council and the Chamber 
of Accounts or Exchequer. 

Of these, the Parlement deserves a word of notice, as one 
of the early attempts to place the ordinary administration of 
The Parle- .H^stice in the hands of a body of men specially 
ment de trained for this service. By this is not meant 

*"^" that the members were primarily thought of as 

lawyers or jurists. The very conception of a lawyer, in the 
modern sense, was unknown to the middle period ; every 
one knew the law, and it was the plain business of the 
governing powers to apply it. The earliest members of the 
Parlement were, therefore, simply persons, lay or clerical, 
who stood high in the king's confidence, and were thought 
of as suitable to represent him in this special side of his 
activity. Gradually, however, as the study and use of the 
Roman law increased, especially during the thirteenth cen- 
tury, the Parlement came almost entirely into the hands of 
technically educated lawyers. The king's court had always 
followed him wherever he might be, — which does not imply 
that the same persons always composed it, but rather that 
various members of his household and those who were his 
nearest neighbors at a given time were called in to serve. 
Now, with the greater specialization of the public service 
the Parlement was definitely located at Paris, and remained 
there. Delegates of the Parlement, or, as we should say^ 



c. 1300] Til/': '^ parlement:' m7> 

circuit justices, were sent out into the provinces to hear 
cases concerning the interest of the king. The terms 
King's Council and Chamber of Accounts explain them- 
selves, the one as the executive or administrative, the other 
as the financial branch of the public service. As we come 
into this stage of the French monarchy we are evidently in 
a wholly new atmosphere. It is no longer the purely 
mediaeval world, but one in which the modern spirit is 
already giving unquestionable signs of its approaching 
victory. 

By the time of Philip the Fair (1285-13 14), the king of 

France had come to be in all essential respects a modern 

king. He had the allegiance of the whole terri- 

The Frencii ^ ^^^^ which his title extended. He was able 

Monarchy ^ 

at the Close to draw from that territory, by means of an 

Middle Ae-e effective financial system, the means wherewith 
to pay both his soldiers and his officers of ad- 
ministration and justice. By means of these soldiers he 
could hold his vassals in obedience and could enforce the 
decisions of his courts of law. He had such confidence in 
his resources that in a time of great need, in the bitterest 
conflict with the papacy that the French kingdom had ever 
had, he did not hesitate to call upon the whole body of his 
subjects, united in the first Estates General (i302_), and to 
commit his cause as the cause of the French nation to their 
hands. All this was not at that time true of any other 
European monarch, excepting, in a somewhat less degree, 
of the king of England. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE MIDDLE AGES. 

LITERATURE. 

ORIGINAL SOURCES. 

Alcuini Epistolae, Jaffe, Bibl. Ker. Germ., vi. 

RatramnVs. On the Body and Blood of the Lord ; with Lathi text. 

1S38. 
The Heliand. An Old-Saxon Harmony of the Gospels, ed. Sievers, 

1878 ; Behagel, 1882. German transl. by Grein. 
Anselmus Cantuariensis. Cur Dcus Homo? i:ng. transl. 1865. 
Abelard, p. Works, edited by V. Cousin. 2 vols., 4°. 1849-59. 
AHELARDUS, p. Tractatiis de iDiitate ct trinitate divina. ed. Stoltzle. 

1891. 
Wright, Thomas. The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter 

Mapes. 184T. 
Carmina Burana. Lateinische und deutsche Lieder und Gedichte. 

1847. Also Carmina Burana Sclecta. Ausgevvahlte lateinische Stu- 

denten- Trink- und Liebeslieder des 12. u. 13. Jahrhunderts. 1879. 

MODERN WORKS. 

EiCKEN, H. VON. Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Welt- 
anschauung. 18S7. An interesting philosophical discussion of the 
principles of mediaeval thought. 

Erdmann, J. E. A History of Philosophy. 3 vols. 1890. 

Ueberweg, Eriedr. A History of Philosophy. 2 vols. 1S72-74. 
tr. from 4th Germ. ed. 

Maurice, E. D. Mediaeval Philosophy from the 5th to the 14th cent. 
2d ed. 1859. 

Haureau, B. Histoire de la Philosophic Scolastique. 3 vols. 1872- 
80. 

TovvNSEND, W.J. The Great Schoolmen of the Middle Ages. 1881. 



\ 



J.rrERA'J'UR/<:. 435 

MuLi.iNCiKR, J. V>. The Schools of C'harles the Great. 1877. 

West, A. F. Alcuin and the Kise of the Christian Schools. 1892. 

A short study of A. as founder of mediaeval education. 
Werner, Karl. Alcuin und sein Jahrhundert. New ed. 1881. 
Church, R. W. Saint Anselm. 1888. 
Ragey. — abbe. liistoire de St. Anselme. 2 vols. 1889. 
Remusat, C. Saint Anselme de Cantorbery. 1853. 
Rule, M. Life and Times of St. Anselm. 2 vols. 1883. 
SCHNITZER, J. IJerengar v. Tours, sein Leben und seine Lehre. 1892. 
Neander, a. The Life and Times of St. P^ernard. Tr. from German. 

1843. 
Storrs, R. S. Bernard of Clairvaux. An historical study in eight 

lectures. 1892. A popular presentation resting upon a study of 

Bernard's writings. 
Eales, S. J. St. Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux. 1890. (The Fathers 

for English readers.) 
Morrison, J. C. The Life and Times of Saint Bernard. New ed. 

1868. 
Giesebrecht, W. Die Vaganten oder Goliarden und ihre Lieder. 

1853- 
Symonds, J. A. Wine, Women and Song. Mediaeval Latin students' 

songs, transl. 1884. 
GuizoT, Mme. Essai historique sur la vie et les ecrits d'Abelard et 

d'Heloise. 1853. 
Remusat, C. Abelard. 2 vols. 1845. 

Compayre, G. Abelard and the Origin and J^^arly History of Univer- 
sities. 1893. Bililiography on Universities. 
Denifle, H. Die Universitaten des Mittelalters. Vol. i, 1885. A 

work planned on a great scale, but not yet carried lieyond the first 

volume — seriously marred by polemic zeal. 
Laurie, S. S. The Rise and lOarly Constitution of Universities, with 

a survey of mediaeval education. 1891. 
Mullinger, J. B. The University of Cambridge. 1873. Also in 

P3pochs of Church History, ed. Creighton. 
Brodrick, G. C. a History of the University of Oxford. 1886. In 

Epochs of Church History, ed. (Jreighton. 
Lyte, H. C. M. a History of the University of C)xford. 1886. 
Gp:i5irART, li. L'ltalie mystique ; histoire de la Renaissance religieuse 

au moyen-age. 1890. 
Vaugiian, R. a. Hours with the Mystics. 2 vols. 2d ed. i860. 
Sabatier, Jj. Vie de St. Francois d'y\ssise. 1893. ICng. tr. 1894. 



436 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [c. Soo 

Olii'HANT, Mrs. M. O. Francis of Assisi. 1870. 

Lk Monnie?.. L. Histoire de Saint Francois d'Assise. 3d ed. 2 vols. 

1S90. 
Lacordaire, a. D. Vie de Saint Dominique. 7th ed. 1871. 
Drane, Augusta T. History of St. Dominic, founder of the friars 

preachers. 1891. 

The history of mediaeval thought is so closely bound up 

with the history of its religious development that the two 

cannot be separated in our study. Never, per- 
Religious . . , ^ ^ , .11 

Character of haps, m the progress of humanity has the content 

Mediaeval of the thinking: mind been so completelv deter- 
Thought. . ... ^ J 

mmed by religious ideas. The cause of this is 

not far to seek. The populations with which we have here 
to do were but just emerging from barbarism ; in many 
ways they were still barbarians. Whatever germs of native 
culture the Germanic races had had within them at the time 
of contact with the Romans had been stifled by the higher 
culture which the conquered race had offered them. One 
after another the several Germanic races had risen — or 
fallen, as we may view the matter — to the level of this 
dominant culture. They had surrendered their religion 
without a struggle ; they had taken on the forms of learning 
which they found ready to their hand ; they had imitated 
the institutions which their own stage of development had 
not fitted them thoroughly to understand ; and so we find 
them after the Carolingian period varnished over with a 
thin coating of civilization, which, at every critical moment, 
but ill concealed the real barbarian beneath. 

Now the agent in this intellectual process had been the 
organized church. In reading the pages of Gregory of 
Tours, written about the year 600, one is con- 
Carolingian stantly impressed with the terrible disparity 
Renaissance, be^^ygg^ ^he noble sentiments of the writer and 
the ghastly morality of the society in which he lived. The 



c. 800] THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE. 437 

Gallic clergy of his day seems like a foreign element in the 
midst of the native population. Then came the reorganiza- 
tion of the whole Frankish church under the impulse of 
the Englishman Boniface, and, following immediately upon 
that, the so-called "revival of learning" in the time of 
Charlemagne. Here again we get the same impression, 
only less violent. The scholars of the court of Charlemagne 
were almost without exception foreigners — men, who, even 
if they were of Germanic stock, had already been Romanized 
in all that pertained to their intellectual life. There is a 
tone of artificiality about it all ; one feels that it is an 
imported culture. In the laws of Charlemagne relating to 
education there is nothing to indicate a spontaneous move- 
ment of the Frankish race from below upward ; it is all a 
thing imposed from above downward, working from without 
inward. If, as was undoubtedly the case, this foreign cul- 
ture was something higher than the race could at once have 
attained to by itself, one cannot help feeling that the process 
was the reverse of the true and natural one, and asking 
one's self whether a culture gained in this way could possibly 
be thoroughly sound and healthy. One is tempted to ask, 
whether, if the Germanic peoples had been let alone to 
develop themselves after their own fashion, a civilization, 
slower indeed in its growth, but built up from the soundest 
elements of the nation's life, might not have moulded the 
European .peoples into a far more effective human instru- 
ment than they were destined to become. 

As we pass on through the Carolingian period the same 
impression goes with us, losing, however, in intensity as 

the process of amalp-amation advances. That 
Charle- ,^. \ . . . , , 

magne's Charlemagne was smcerely anxious to make the 

Educational Franks capable of entering: into the inheritance 
Efforts. ^ 

of Rome there can be no manner of doubt. He 

was, far more at least than his immediate predecessors, a man 



-(- 



438 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [9th cent. 

of culture. He could read and understand Latin — how 
well, perhaps, we had better not too closely inquire ; he tried 
late in life to learn to write, but plainly his progress in that 
direction did not greatly impress his partial biographer. 
Far more important, however, is his sympathetic interest in 
whatever there was of intellectual activity visible in his 
people. He summoned to his court a group of scholars, at 
the head of whom was the Englishman Alcuin, a man trained 
in the school of York, and with a wide experi- 
ence of travel and study in the south. To him 
was intrusted the work of organizing at least the beginnings 
of a system of education. The writings of Alcuin which 
have come down to us show that he was as far as possible 
from being an original thinker on any subject. The so- 
called Palace School, over which he presided, was probably 
a very unsystematic affair, hardly more than an amusement 
for the ladies and gentlemen of the court ; but it was some- 
thing that an example was set in a quarter where imitation 
was most likely to follow. Another character in the school 
was Einhard — friend, biographer and perhaps son-in-law of 
the king. We have from him, besides the Vita CaroH 
Magni, a series of historical records, among the earliest 
examples of a kind destined to be the prevailing form of 
historical writing throughout the Middle Ages, called "An- 
nals " from the fact that the record is made by years. The 
Vita is a very neat bit of character-drawing, closely modeled 
on the Lives of t/ie E??iperors, by Suetonius. The annals — 
meagre, unsystematic, with no sense of historical propor- 
tion — are yet precious documents for us in an age when the 
literary impulse was languid almost to the point 

Pauius ^£ silence. Another "find" of Charlemagne's in 

Diaconus. ° 

Italy was Pauius, called " Diaconus " — a typical 

historian of the time. Two great works of his have come 

to us in more or less complete form : one a history of the 



9th cent.] THE CAROLINGIAN RENAISSANCE. 439 

bishops of Metz, and the other a history of tlie Lombards. 
Both are singular mixtures of oral tradition, pure legend and 
disordered extracts from earlier writings without criticism or 
examination. In neither of them is there anything of the 
writer's own observation or independent inquiry. With him 
came a scholar of a different sort, — Peter of Pisa, — a 
grammarian, whose function was to teach language at the 
court school. Poetic composition, such as it was^ was rep- 
resented by Angilbert, a Frank, the openly acknowledged 
lover of the king's daughter, father by her of the historian 
Nithard, and all this time a monk in good odor, abbot of 
St. Richier in Picardy. Angilbert's poetry is a curious jum- 
ble of Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, in fair epic form, and generally 
treating of the life of his own time and immediate surround- 
ings. Theodulf, bishop of Orleans, has left us similar 
poems, considerable in quantity and of great historical value 
for the light they throw upon the conditions of the court of 
Charles. 

The chief interest of Charlemagne's effort in .this direc- 
tion is in its effect upon the following period. Little 
as we know of the actual facts, it is quite clear from this 
time on that education has received a new impulse. It 
moves along ways already prepared for it ; its centres are 
the monasteries and the bishoprics, which had always been 
the homes of what intellectual life there was. The differ- 
ence is that now, with a more energetic administration of 
the state, the cause of education advances, like every other 
interest, with more confidence and with larger results. 
Instead of the foreigners we begin to have native scholars 
in considerable numbers, and their work begins to show 
fruits. 

Perhaps the best illustration of this is the activity in 
doctrinal matters, which appears at, and just after, the mid- 
dle of the ninth century, the period, it will be remembered, 



440 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [9th cent. 

when great questions of church law were agitating Frank- 
land to its very centre. In speaking of the Forged Decretals 

we stated the common opinion of scholars that 
Doctrinal , 1 , r c ^ 

Contro- \.yi^j were the product of a group of clergymen 

versies. i^ Gaul. This fact in itself would indicate an 

9tli Century. . . . , , , . , 1 , 

activity quite beyond anything we should expect 

at an earlier day. The same period marks the breaking-out 

of two notable doctrinal controversies, — notable, both for 

their content and for the spirit they display. The first of 

these is on the question of Tran substantiation, that doctrine 

of the church which more than any other was to be made 

the central point of dogmatic discussion down into the 

century of the Reformation. Briefly stated, this doctrine is 

..rr- • t- that in the sacrament of the Eucharist or Lord's 
"Transub- 

stantiation" Supper, the bread and the wine are, by means 
denned. ^^ ^1^^ words spoken by the priest, converted 

into the actual body and blood of Christ. This was, in the 
ninth century, no new idea. It had long been held as a 
part of the accepted church tradition ; but men had been 
satisfied with holding it without trying to define it more 
precisely. It is an interesting sign of the rising of new 
intellectual energy in the north, that men begin to seek for 
a more precise definition. The controversy was started by 
one Paschasius Radbertus, a monk of Corbie in France, 
whose thought on this subject could not be satisfied without 
going to the utmost extreme of logic. If this doctrine is 
true, in what sense is it true ? Is this a transformation in 
the imagination of the communicant, so that he receives 
into his body, as it were, the spiritual substance of Christ, 
thereby becoming more like him and so a better man? Or, 
on the other hand, is it a physical transformation, whereby 
the bread actually and physically ceases to be bread and 
becomes flesh, and the wine in the same way becomes an 
actual and physical blood? Paschasius, with that pitiless 



9th cent.] DOCTRINAL DISPUTES. 441 

logic which was to be the most striking feature of northern 
speculation, declared himself for the latter view. " God," 
he said, " is all-powerful ; therefore he am change one thing 
into another." There is an actual miraculous change of 
substance, while at the same time the " accidents " of the 
bread and the wine, that is, all those qualities by which 
our senses perceive them, remain the same. This is a 
merciful provision, lest the communicant be shocked by the 
knowledge that he is actually eating flesh and blood ; — 
although as a matter of fact Christ has often appeared on 
the altar without this precaution, as for instance, under 
the form of a child or of a lamb. 

This straightforward and consistent materialism found 
at once vigorous opposition. All the leaders in Frankish 
ODBosition to l^^^^^'^g ^t that day took part in the controversy. 
Transub- Foremost against Paschasius was Rabanus 
s an la on. jvf^urus, archbishop of Mainz, whose treatise 
on the subject has been lost. The most thorough state- 
ment of this side was made by the monk Ratramnus, whose 
treatise, long supposed to be the work of John Scotus 
Erigena, puts the basis o:^ the Eucharistic rite wholly on 
spiritual grounds. True, we receive the body and blood of 
Christ, but in a spiritual sense ; otherwise there would be 
no room for the exercise of faith. The argument against 
Transubstantiation has never been more powerfully put, 
and is quite worthy of the fame of Erigena, the straightest 
thinker of his day, whose opinion also was undoubtedly on 
the same side. On the other hand, no less a man than 
Hincmar of Rheims, the most important personage in the 
Gallic church, took up the cudgels for Paschasius ; others 
came to his support and the result was that this form of 
the doctrine, the grossest and le'ast spiritual possible, be- 
came the accepted belief of the church, and remains so to 
this day. 



442 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [9th cent. 

Another doctrinal controversy shows also the activity of 

this late Carolingian period in matters of speculative 

^^ _ thought. Here again it was not a new idea, but 

Tne Doc- ® ° ' 

trine of Pre- rather a new emphasis upon one which the 
destma on. church had perhaps been too much inclined to 
forget. The originator of this discussion was a Saxon 
named Gottschalk, who had been thrust into a monastery 
as a child, then tried to get out, but, being prevented, threw 
himself into the study of Augustine, and there became con- 
vinced, just as Luther did in his day, that the church 
had never been able to live up to the standard of pure 
Augustinian teaching. The central doctrine of the great 
teacher of the West had been the incapacity of the human 
soul to work itself free of the burden of sinfulness with which 
it came into the world, and hence the necessity of some 
higher decision as to its ultimate fate. Man could not save 
himself ; he was only to be saved by an act of God's will, 
and this act applied only to certain persons selected by the 
same inscrutable will. Certain souls were selected to be 
saved, but — and here the logic of Augustine failed him — 
it could not be said that certain others were selected to be 
damned. Gottschalk, as fresh a Christian probably as 
Augustine himself, could not see why this was not an 
irresistible conclusion. He published his opinions, but 
found himself almost alone in them. Tried, first by 
Rabanus at Mainz and then by Hincmar at 

847. , 

Rheims, he was taken by the latter, flogged and 
then imprisoned for the remaining twenty years of his life. 
The only treatise in this controversy worth our present 
notice is that of Erigena, written at the request of Hincmar, 
but going far beyond the orthodox view of his time. Not 
only is there no double piredestination, he said, but there is 
no predestination at all. Man shares the liberty of every 
reasonable being to shape himself as he will. Sin is a pure 



9th cent.] ASCETICISM AND THOUGHT. 443 

negation ; and there is no punishment of sin but the sin 
itself. 

It will be observed that the actors in both these contro- 
versies were all northerners, belonging, all of them, to the 

■„xx ^ * circle of scholars who surrounded Charles the 
Effect of 

Asceticism Bald. This was, undoubtedly, the first fruits of 
on Learning, ^j^^ ^^^^^ ^^ Charlemagne, and of that idea of 
the religious life which he represented. According to him, 
if we may judge by his acts, the clergyman was to be a holy 
man indeed, but not a premature saint. The bishop was a 
public man, bound to be learned and to do his formal duty, 
but bound also to serve his king with men and money. The 
monk was to keep strictly to his rule, but he, too, was, in 
his way, a public functionary ; he was to cultivate learning, 
and he was to help along in the necessary work of opening 
up the country to civilized industry. The dreamer by pro- 
fession finds no place in the laws of Charlemagne, as, 
indeed, the ascetic ideal had little room for lodgment in his 
essentially practical mind. With the accession of Louis the 
Pious, there came, as we have seen, a turn in this develop- 
ment. The more strictly ascetic tendency, represented by 
Benedict of Aniane, had its chance, and began to rival very 
powerfully the more practical spirit of the previous genera- 
tion. That learning should be controlled by the clerical, 
and primarily by the monastic element, was now decided ; 
the question still remained what the character of this new 
learning was to be. On this point the course of ideas 
can readily be traced. From the time of the triumph of 
Christianity over -heathenism, we can see, growing step by 
step, the feeling that the learning of antiquity was a danger- 
ous thing for Christian minds. Gregory the Great had 
reprimanded a Gallic bishop for teaching "grammar," say- 
ing, that the lips devoted to the service of God ought not to 
be polluted by such heathen abominations. The same idea 



444 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [loth cent. 

crops out in the effort to make the monasteries homes of 
ascetic zeal. The classical learning was to be pursued, but 
the moment a man found himself enjoying it, he was in 
danger. It must be studied, but only as a means of 
preparing men for the holy work of the church. The 
ancient authors were simply models of style, not re- 
corders of things worth knowing, and, least of all, were 
they for a moment to be thought of as rivaling the 
great writers of the early Christian church, the " Fathers," 
from whom all that was worth knowing could safely be 
learned. 

The very embodiment of this idea was the order of Cluny. 
Its whole struggle was to keep alive the ideal of the ascetic 

Citiny favors ^^^^' ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ opposed to the life of 
the Ascetic pleasure. The holy abbot Odo tells us that in 
his youth he had been seduced by the charms of 
the ancient literature, but that, having fallen asleep one day 
over his precious Virgil, he had seen in a vision a wondrous 
antique vase, which, as he stretched out his hand to grasp 
it, proved to be full of writhing serpents. From that day he 
never touched his classics again. The first eager impulse 
of this ascetic revival probably explains in part the great 
decline of literature in the course of the tenth century. 
Quite consistent with this opinion is the fact that the most 
encouraging signs of literary progress in this period are 
seen in a region where the Cluny theory of monasticism had 
not penetrated. The Carolingian foundations in Saxony 
J.. had by this time become in their turn so many 

Impulse in centres of light, and had been distinctly encour- 
^^°^"^" aged by the rising house of the Ottos. The 

men and women of this family represent a sturdy form of 
piety, far removed from the sentimental over-consciousness 
of the strict ascetic party. The new Saxon bishoprics of 
the early Carolingian times had been fostered with great 



nth cent.] NEW CULTURE I iV SAXONY, 445 

care, and were increased by others equally strong and effec- 
tive. The warfare with heathenism along the border kept 
alive the missionary spirit, with its practical adaptation of 
means to ends. The monasteries of Hersfeld, Corvey and 
Hildesheim for men, Quedlinburg and Gandersheim for 
women, became the seats of a culture which carried on the 
germs of the classic tradition to a very considerable devel- 
opment. Out of this circle grows the history of the Saxon 
people by Widukind, our chief source of knowledge for the 
house of Otto, a book as valuable for the earlier traditions 
of the Saxons as that of Paulus Diaconus for those of the 
Lombards. That this culture was pursued by women as 
well is shown by the unique productions of Roswitha, a 
nun of Gandersheim, who, fully sensible of the charms of 
the Latin poets, but sensible also of the danger of their 
contents, undertook to imitate their form, .and to substitute 
Christian materials for the plots of Plautus and Terence. 
The abbesses of Quedlinburg were, during many years, 
taken fram the royal Saxon house ; one of them, Matilda, 
was regent of the kingdom while her nephew, Otto III, was 
absent in Italy. The annalistic records, especially those 
of Hildesheim and Hersfeld, begin in this time and become 
of increasing value as the civilization of the race grows. 
By the time of Otto, III the pure Saxon tradition, as shown 
in the wonderful poem of the " Heliand " in the early ninth 
century, is completely overcome by the Latinized culture 
of the Franks. "Why should I repeat this story," says 
Widukind when he comes to the Frankish conquest, "since 
you can read it all in the histories of the Franks ? " His 
Saxon fathers, battling in desperate struggle for their in- 
herited liberty and their ancient faith, have become for him 
simply men caught in the toils of a dreadful superstition 
from which they were delivered by the valor of the great 
Charles. 



446 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [nth cent. 

As we pass over into the eleventh century the interest of 

our hterary study begins once more to centre about the 

western parts of Europe. A2,ain it is a dogmatic 
Beginnings i • i i ^^^ ^ i , • 

of the controversy which best lUustrates the gathermg 

Scholastic of ideas into forms which can be studied. If we 
examine carefully the doctrine of Transubstantia- 
tion as it appeared in the writings of Paschasius and his 
defenders, we see at once that its acceptance depended 
upon a certain philosophical idea. If men could believe 
that underneath the outward appearances of any object, 
bread for instance, there lay a something whose existence 
was no less real because we cannot perceive it, and further 
that this something is the real thing and the only real thing, 
while those aspects of it which we can perceive are very 
unimportant, "accidents" in fact, then these same men 
could easily take one more step and think of this reality as 
separable from its accidents. That accomplished, it was an 
easy step to the idea that this reahty, this " substance " 
could be changed into another, without affecting the acci- 
dents, from which it was, in fact, quite separate. At the 
time of Paschasius opinions were, as we saw, very much 
divided on this point. Since his time the drift had been 
wholly in his direction. 

No decisive action of the church had been taken, but 
when, about the year 1050, Berengar, a canon of Tours, 
declared himself unable to go through this philo- 
Berengfar sophic process, and, therefore, unable to accept 
the doctrine of Transubstantiation, he found a 
perfect storm about his head. Down to this time the 
papacy had hardly been in position to exercise much 
influence in a purely intellectual discussion. A generation 
earlier Gerbert had justified his resistance to Rome by 
declaring that all learning and piety, not to say common 
decencv, had deserted Rome and had taken up its seat in 



nth cent] THEOLOGY BECOMING PHILOSOPHY. 447 

Gaul Now, however, things had changed. The papacy 
had just been pulled out of the mire of Roman politics by 
the strong hand of Henry III and given one more chance 
to show what it could do for Europe. When Berengar, in 
a letter to his friend Lanfranc, afterward Archbishop of 
Canterbury, stated his opinion, Lanfranc, at the time in 
Rome, showed the letter to pope Leo IX, the last man in 
the world to let such an opportunity drop. Berengar, sum- 
moned to a council, first at Rome, then at Vercelli, seems to 
have been willing to go, but was prevented by king Henry 
I of France. Later he did go to Rome, and was present at 
the great Lateran council of 1059. There, his doctrine was 
totally condemned, and he was forced into a sort of recan- 
tation. His confidence in going to Rome seems to have 

come from some previous discussion with Hilde- 
Berengrar ^ 

and brand who had led him to believe that his 

Hiidebrand, doctrine might easily be made to square with the 
church tradition. After Hildebrand had become pope, 
Berengar was again before a Roman council, and after long 
discussion and attempts at compromise was brought to sign 
a declaration of belief in the crudest and most material form 
possible of the Transubstantiation doctrine. All this, how- 
ever, did not prevent him from going home and teaching his 
views to his dying day. 

We have seen how this heresy of Berengar came from a 
philosophical difificulty, which, if we should follow it out, 

would give us the key to the most important 
"Mani- . . . 

chean" and phases of mediaeval thought. At this point, 

"Dccetic" however, it seems proper to notice another 
Ideas. , . 

aspect of this famous discussion and to ask 

ourselves why the church found it important to insist with 

such energy upon its view of the Eucharistic problem. In 

describing the formation of the Hildebrandine party just at 

this time we have noticed in Lombardy the party known as 



448 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [c. iioo 

the '- Pataria " and have takefi a hurried gUmpse of their 
peculiar views. These '' heretics " belonged to the general 
class of the " Manicheans," whose ideas had been moving 
westward over Europe, cropping out here and there and 
always exciting the greatest hostility from the organized 
church. In France, not so very long before, there had 
been a regular persecution of similar persons. The con- 
fessor of queen Constance had been convicted of the taint 
and had been put to death. The chief offense of this party 
was, that starting with a peculiar conception of the material 
universe as the eternal opponent of the spiritual, they came 
to a notion of the Christ which would not allow them to 
believe that God the spirit could ever have demeaned him- 
self to take upon him the actual physical body of a man. 
Instead of this he must have assumed only the form of 
humanity. The apparent life and death of Jesus were 
therefore only a mere delusion of the senses ; he M'as not 
an actual man, but only an apparent (docefic) man. This 
" docetic " idea struck at the very root of the fundamental 
doctrine of historic Christianit}'. If Jesus were not just as 
really man as he was really God, then the whole church 
theology was overturned. 

Now the most striking expression of this faith of the 
church was in the Eucharistic service. Here, before the 

very eyes of the faithful occurred its absolute 
Connection demonstration. Here was, not a symbol of 
with the Christ's humanity, but the very human Christ 

himself, bodily as he was, taken into the body 
of the believer. Whoever cast a doubt upon this doctrie, 
therefore, put himself into a dangerous alliance with the 
terrible Manichean. A spiritual interpretation of this idea 
might, in the temper of the age, easily run over into a too 
spiritual conception of the man Christ himself. The indul- 
gence of Hildebrand on this point may perhaps be under- 



c. iioo] NOMINALISM AND REALISM. 449 

stood in the light of his similar indulgence towards the 

Patarini of Lombardy. They gave him just at the right 

moment the kind of support he wanted against the married 

clergy, and precisely in the year 1078 Hildebrand was in 

no condition to throw aside any alliance that could help in 

that direction. The church, more orthodox than the pope, 

had no such scruples and condemned Berengar in the 

straightest terms. From that day to this it has branded 

him as the worst of heretics. 

The chief interest of Berengar to us is as an illustration 

of the intellectual ferment, just beginning to appear among 

the schools of northern Gaul. The essential 

Nominalism (doctrines of the church were fully established : 
and Realism. -' ' 

learning had ceased to occupy itself with the 
content of the ancient literatures, but the human mind, 
impatient even then of control, could not cease to act. 
If it might not safely discuss the content of its belief, it 
must busy itself with discussing its form. If ^.t could not 
question the fact, it would try to find out the " why " and 
the "how" of the fact. In this effort it found itself at the 
very outset confronted by a problem, on the solution of 
which all its future action seemed to depend. In defining 
this problem we may use terms already employed in speak- 
ing of Berengar's troubles. His mental difficulty had been 
to comprehend the existence of a substance or "subject" 
independent of its attributes or "accidents." This same 
difficulty showed itself at the same time in other ways. 
The first person to give it philosophical expression was 
one Roscellinus, a canon of Compiegne and a teacher in 
the school of Paris. Although his writings are lost, we 
learn his opinions from those of his great opponent, Anselm 
of Canterbury, and of his pupil, Abelard. Put in philosophi- 
cal language, the position of Roscellinus was that all those 
general terms by which we designate species or classes 



450 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [c. iioo 

were only names, invented to sum up for us in convenient 
form the impressions gained from our knowledge of the 
individuals who make up the classes. The term "horse," 
for example, is only a convenient sound (^flatus vocis) by 
which we connote all those impressions which our experi- 
ence of horses has given us. Knowledge, in other words, 
begins with the individuals and proceeds to the universals : 
■ — '■'■ imh'ersalia post rem.'''' Not so, said the opponents. 
These general ideas, far from being mere names, are real 
things, in fact the only real things, and the individual phe- 
nomena are but illustrations of them. Before we had ever 
seen a horse the reality, "horse" existed in the universal 
mind. Strip away from it all its accidents and still it 
remains, the only permanent thing in this change : — " mii- 
versalia ante re7n.''' Of course there was also a party of 
those who would take neither side of this controversy and 
set up for their motto the conciliatory principle, '-'' universalia 
i?i ;r." 

If we think of all this as a mere war of words about 
things that no one could ever understand it is dreary 

enough indeed, but if we apply these ideas to 
Bearing the really great concerns of men we begin to 

of the see that it was by no means an idle warfare. 

If, for instance, we say instead of "horse," 
"church," how shall we fix the attitude of the two schools? 
Plainly the Realist would conceive of the church as having 
a peculiar existence of its own, independent of the individual 
men who at any time compose it. To him it would be a 
sacred entity, which no individual might properly criticise, 
but under which he must classify himself as completely as 
may be. The Nominalist, on the other hand, would begin 
with his individuals and would define the church as a mere 
name, by which we group these individuals for our own 
mental convenience. The same process would hold for the 



c. iioo] ANSELM OF CANTERBURY. 451 

state, the guild or any other grouping of men. And rising 
higher we should find here two opinions as to the nature of 
God ; one making him the convenient summary of our ideas 
upon the divine, the other giving him an absolute original 
existence independent of any human interpretation. 

Perhaps the fairest illustration of this early scholastic 
thought is to be found in the person of Anselm of Canter- 
bury. Of Italian birth, but educated in the 
Anselm of -^ ' 

Canterbtiry. rising schools of northern Gaul, Anselm became 
I033-II09. ^^g^ monk, then prior of the Norman monastery 
of Bee, and was thence transferred to the chief ecclesiastical 
seat of Norman England at Canterbury. He demonstrated 
his loyalty to the Roman theory of the church by taking 
the side of the Gregorian party in the question of the invest- 
itures and shared the triumph of his party in England. 
Anselm was the first scholar to undertake the scientific 
demonstration of the facts of the Christian tradition. In 
doing this his starting-point was the absolute truth of the 
whole body of these facts as received from the church. 
His intellectual principle was that faith must precede knowl- 
edge. He said " 7ion iJitelligo ut credaju ; sed credo ut intel- 
ligamy Let no man seek to inquire whether that which the 
church teaches may not be true ; on the contrary, he must 
absolutely accept this and govern himself by it. If then he 
can comprehend why and how this is true, let him thank 
God ; if not, let him give up his search, for the chances are 
that he will get the worst of it if he goes on. 

This defines most accurately the orthodox scholastic 
position. It rests upon that conception of the nature of 

_. _ ^...^ knowledge which we have been trvinsr to under- 
His Hostility ^ . 

to Nominal- Stand. Naturally Anselm was drawn into con- 
^^^' troversy with the nominalistic view. He wrote 

a vigorous treatise against Roscellinus, to which he gave the 
title " The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation of 



452 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [1079-1142 

the Word against the Blasphemies of Roscellinus." He 

speaks of his opponent as one of those new-fangled dialectic 

heretics who are so stupid that they cannot distinguish the 

horse from the color of the horse. In Anselm we see the 

most perfect form of that subordination of the individual 

mind to the dictation of the organized church, which was to 

be the most marked feature of all mediaeval thought. Men 

were at liberty to think as hard as they pleased, but they 

must do it within certain well-defined limits. \A"hen they 

found their minds getting dangerously near these limits they 

must assume that they were going wrong, and must turn 

about and wander over the familiar ways again. 

Of course this was a splendid service to the Roman 

organization. The alarm which the church had thus far 

_. • felt at the advance of learninii was beofinnins; to 

The ^ o c^ 

University be set at rest ; learning was coming to show 
° ^ ^' itself not the enemy but the tirmest ally of the 
traditional doctrine, and, what was more to the purpose, of 
the established organization. It is in these early efforts of 
the human mind to work out, in what seemed a scientific 
fashion, the greatest problems of faith and thought, that we 
find the beginnings of modern, systematic higher education. 
The precise origins of the European universities are lost in 
obscurity, ^^'e can tell when they were first recognized as 
corporate bodies, but it seems clear that long before this 
there had been at the same places groups of teachers, Avho 
offered instruction to whoever wanted it, and took their pay 
from each scholar precisely as a modern private tutor would 
do. The profession of teaching was emancipating itself from 
the monasteries and beginning to come out for itself as a 
recognized means of livelihood. Such a teacher, probably, 
was Roscellinus: another was William of Champeaux, famous 
at Paris in the last years of the eleventh century as the 
invincible dialectician. Certain it is that any bright young 



I079-II42] PETER ABELARD. 453 

man, seeking to go farther than the preparatory drill of the 

^'- trivium'^ and ^'- quadrii^ium,''' was naturally drawn to Paris, 

and that the number of such youths was very considerable. 

Pitiful as the pursuit of reasoning in circles about things 

of which men were perfectly certain when they started, may 

seem to us, we cannot fail to get the impression that Paris 

was the centre of the most active kind of intellectual life. 

It was very much that men were thinking at all, and out of 

it something must surely come. 

At this stage of things we meet the most attractive and 

brilliant figure of the whole scholastic period. Peter Abelard 

was a native of Normandy, well educated at 
Peter ^ ' 

Abelard. home, and then attracted to Paris by the fame of 
I079-II42. William of Champeaux. His first achievement 
was to beat his master in a dialectic encounter, in conse- 
quence of which the veteran was actually forced to leave the 
town and Abelard was encouraged to set himself up as a 
teacher of dialectics. He offers us the singular spectacle 
of an active, restless intellect, thrown into the midst of a 
community which could appreciate his gifts only so long as 
he used them in conventional ways, but was ready to pounce 
upon him the moment he began to follow the leading of 
his own acute reasoning. In our day he would have been a 
furious radical ; in the eleventh century he was only a 
human being in a society which had little regard for the 
human in mankind. It would lead us too far to go into the 
conflicts of Abelard with the established authorities in 
church and state. In an age when the ascetic ideal was 
fixing itself on European society as the one means by which 
it could be held in some kind of order and decency, he 
openly violated the social law, not of the church merely, but 
of civilization, justifying himself, as similar minds have done 
since, by the claim of the higher law of the individual over 
the arbitrary regulations of the social organism. 



454 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE, [0.1150 

Doctrinally Abelard was probably as sound as thousands 
of others who have made their doctrines square with the 
demand of their time. The popular belief was, however, to 
the contrary, and he was brought before several Gallic 
synods and regularly disciplined. The worst charge against 
him, that he questioned the doctrine of the Trinity, was not 
proved, and Abelard was suffered to end his days in peace 
in the seclusion of the monastery of Cluny. But though 
thus formally acquitted of heresy, there can be no doubt 
that Abelard was the most dangerous kind of a 
Mu^^ce ^^^^ possible to the Middle Ages. Even if he 
did not maintain, as was charged against him, 
that nothing was true that could not be proved, the whole 
tendency of his life and teaching pointed in that direction. 
His immense personal popularity, — even allowing for the 
exaggerations of his own statements, — showed that he had 
something to offer to the youth of his day that appealed 
most strongly to their imagination. If he was not an out- 
and-out Nominalist he was as far from being a Realist, and 
the youths who listened to his dialectic subtleties could 
hardly help applying the same principle to the institutions 
they saw about them. The career of Arnold of Brescia is 
the clearest illustration of what the teaching of Abelard 
would lead to in the case of an ardent youth, filled with 
the enthusiasm of humanity and longing to work out into 
tangible forms the ideas he had been taking in. From the 
teaching of Paris Arnold returned to his native Brescia, and 
found himself at once in the midst of conflicts which forced 
him to apply to practical affairs the philosophic principles 
he had been learning. Compelled to leave Brescia, he 
turned again to the counsels of his master and spent the 
next five years in France and Switzerland, leaving every- 
where a strong impression of his force and clearness of 
insight into the existing evils of society; thence back 



c. 1150] ARNOLD OF BRESCIA. 455 

again into Italy, more than ever inspired with the sense of a 
mission given him to put these ideas of individual right and 
the independence of the human mind into practice. The 
opportunity came with the revolution in Rome, which in the 
year 1143 had overturned the temporal power of the papacy 
and put Rome into the hands of her own citizens under the 
forms of a revived republic. So closely was Arnold identi- 
fied with this Roman revolution that later tradition came to 
think of him, without reason, as its author.-^ 

Arnold's part in Roman affairs may be regarded as the 
most striking illustration of what would have come to pass 

everywhere if the thought of Abelard had become 
Basis of the dominant principle of European action. The 

Arnold's existing forms of the Roman institution could 

never have withstood the free criticism of minds 
untrammeled by the fixed limitations of the scholastic 
method. The moment men began to use their minds in in- 
dependent ways, asking themselves simply, " Is this thing so? 
Is it honorable ? Is it right ? Can we better it ? " the kind 
of questions in short that any man would ask whose thought 
was not fixed beforehand in lines from which he might not 
diverge, that moment was the beginning of the end for the 
whole Roman church system. Its very existence depended 
upon maintaining throughout Europe a condition of mind 
which would not suffer such questions. It was necessary 
that men should begin with the absolute truth of the system 
as it was. They might play around it with fine distinctions 
and the brilliant fire-works of their dialectics as much as 
they pleased, but the least appearance of question as to its 
absolute imperativeness must be met at the outset with 
decisive energy. That was precisely the difference between 
Anselm and Abelard. Anselm had gone all around the 
danger of critical inquiry; Abelard had run straight into it, 

1 See p. 293 ff. 



456 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [c. 1150 

and what was worse, he had led others after him. The 

Roman revolution was only the logical demonstration of 

what might be expected if this kind of philosophic heresy 

was to go on. 

Arnold was crushed out of existence by a combination 

which, when it could be brought to bear, no force could 

^ .^ ^ resist. Ideas which, if the emperor had been 
opposition to ^ 

Scholasticism, able to understand them, might have been turned 
ys icism. ^Q i^-g lasting profit, were put out of harm's 
way to serve the purpose of the very institution he was 
all his life trying to control. The immediate interest of 
Barbarossa in this act was undoubtedly a merely political 
one; he needed the papacy at the moment and crushed its 
enemy to gain its peace. Far more powerful, however, than 
any political necessity was the working of a set of ideas 
fundamentally different from those of scholasticism, opposing 
them in their spirit, though often allying itself with them to 
enforce the beautiful mediaeval ideal. The essential ele- 
ment of Scholasticism was an intellectual one. However 
narrowing and cramping to the human mind the system 
might be, it nevertheless depended for its results upon 
distinctly intellectual processes. It maintained the faith, 
but it wanted its measure of sight as well. The rival system, 
on the contrary, to which we give the broad and vague name 
of " Mysticism," rested its conclusions upon a quite different 
process. It too started with entire acceptance of the whole 
body of faith as it was handed on by the organized church ; 
but it felt no need of confirming this faith by any mental 
action whatever. Rather, shaking itself free of all such 
mechanical devices, it fell back upon that basis, so welcome 
to the mystics of all ages, the " testimony of the 

THe Basis of ^^turally Christian soul." The truth of the 
Mysticism. •' 

doctrine was to be enforced, not by demonstration 

through dialectics, or by appeal to any philosophic authority, 



c. 1150] MYSTICISM. 457 

but by the contemplation of the devout soul, looking into 
its own inmost depths and finding there the response to the 
formal statement of the creeds. The individual was to 
absorb the truth, not by putting it to the test of his own 
poor reason, but rather by fitting his own individuality to 
the truth. . The aim, it will be seen, was the same as that of 
the scholastics, viz., the reconciliation between the individual 
soul and the body of Christian belief ; in the one case this 
reconciliation was through the use of as much intellect as 
was safe, in the other through using as little intellect as 
possible. 

We are dealing here with an opposition that runs through- 
out human society ; there must always be the men of the 
intellect and the men of faith. At times the line 
^ ^^^V?» i^^y be drawn very sharply between them ; in 
the Middle Ages this line was often obscure. 
The tendency to formulate everything was so great that 
even the Mystics found themselves drawn into a "school" 
of their own. The founder of this school was that William 
of Champeaux, who was driven out of Paris by the rising 
fame of Abelard and betook himself to the neighboring 
monastery of St. Victor. Himself a scholastically trained 
man, his treatment of mystical ideas naturally took on a 
scholastic form and gave the tone to the teaching of his 
successors, the " Victorians,"' who, for a century to come, 
kept up here a successful rivalry to the more strictly intel- 
lectual scholasticism of Paris. 

The effect of the " mystic " state of mind has always been 

to turn men into one of two attitudes: either into the life of 

solitary contemplation, or into that of intense 

Conteniplative humanitarian activity. The former, with its 
Mysticism. -' 

semi-scholastic element, is represented in the 

early Middle Ages by the "Victorians " and in the later by 

such names as Bonaventura, Eckhart, Tauler and Thomas 



458 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [c. 1150 

a Kempis. The literature of this direction is mainly emotional ; 
it carries the reader into the region of deep personal convic- 
tion, and tends to strengthen in him every germ of attach- 
ment to the traditional doctrine, and to the existing forms 
of its presentation. On the other hand this same profound 

conviction, so profound that it needs no argu- 
M^sticis ment to support it, may drive a man out of the 

luxury of personal contemplation into the most 
eager conflict with existing evil. The intensity of his own 
conviction may compel him to carry it to others, and to use 
it as his weapon in the greatest conflicts. It may inspire a 
great preacher or a great organizer or a great reformer. 

Such is the point of view from which one must approach 
the man who, more than any other, represents the Spirit of 

the Middle Ages. Bernard of Clairvaux came 
Clair^a ° out of that stock of the French nobility which 

was producing the best there was in every line 
of activity in the late eleventh century. The ascetic impulse, 
developed by the Cluny influence to a point where it had 
begun to fall away from its original purity, seized upon him 
with all its resistless force. For a nature like his there was 
no half-way surrender; the monastery meant to him not a 
place of easy and luxurious retirement, where a man might 
keep himself pure from earthly contact, nor even a home of 
learnins:, from which a man might influence his world. It 
meant rather a place of pitiless discipline, whereby the 
natural man should be reduced to the lowest terms and thus 
the spiritual life be given its largest liberty. Already the 
decline of the ascetic spirit in the congregation of Cluny 
had led to a new departure, and the order of the Cistercians 
had arisen, with a stricter enforcement of the rule. But 
even this was not strict enough for Bernard. With a hand- 
ful of followers he plunged into the forest, and there in a 
sunny glade, cla7'a vallis, he founded the new house of 



C.I 150] BERNARD VERSUS ABELARD. 459 

Clairvaux. If ever a man knew his age, it was Bernard, 
This appeal to the ascetic ideal was more effective than any 
conformity to the dominant tendency of the older orders 
could have been. The same spirit that was drawing men to 
the following of the cross, sent eager throngs into the stern 
discipline of Clairvaux. The founder could pick his men, 
and he did so with such skill that he had soon prepared a 
trained body of lieutenants for the warfare he had in view. 
What we have said already as to the methods of Cluny 
applies, with few changes, here also. The aim of Bernard 
was nothing less than the regeneration of society through 
the presence in it of devoted men, bound together by a 
compact organization, and holding up to the world the high- 
est types of an ideal which had already fixed itself in the 
imagination of the age. From Clairvaux as a new centre 
men were to go out and carry into other places the principles 
that had made it effective. At his death he was able to 
count no less than one hundred and fifty religious houses 
which had been "reformed" through his influence. 

But this monastic reform was only the instrument for the 
larger ideas of Bernard. His life was spent in ceaseless 

^ , efforts to maintain unimpaired the immense ad- 
Bernard and ^ 

the Scholas- vantage which the Roman organization in all its 
ic earning:. ^^-^^^ j^g^^j^ gained in the conflict with the temporal 
powers. More clearly than any one else he saw whither the 
scholastic process in the hands of an Abelard must inevitably 
tend, and he threw the whole weight of his immense 
personality into the scale against it. Abelard was the pride 
of the school of Paris ; his irregularities of life and the 
shadiness of his opinions had not greatly diminished his 
popularity. Not only the eager youth who followed all his 
changes of fortune, but the cooler heads of the Galilean 
church showed often the largest charity to the man even 
when they did not quite follow the bold flight of his ideas. 



460 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE., [c. 1200 

Left to themselves it may be doubted whether the clergy of 

France would have taken decisive action against him. The 

correspondence of Bernard leaves no room for doubt that he 

thought of this intellectual conflict as a crusade from which 

he could not draw back. He appears as the prosecuting 

attorney in the final trial of Abelard, and he it was who 

brought the opposition of the French clergy to a focus. 

The antagonism of Bernard and Abelard is the more 

interesting because it is not one of personalities. Bernard 

„ ^ , ^. . did not enter the dialectic lists and try to 
Scholasticism ^ 

in the Service overcome his opponent with his own weapons; 
of the Churc . ^^^ j^^ done so defeat would have been certain. 
His policy was, rather, to show what must be the outcome 
of that principle of proving all things, which was the gist of 
Abelard's whole philosophy. The error that Bernard fought 
against was not in this or that scholastic trick ; it was 
fundamental, going to the very roots of the great ecclesi- 
astical structure he had sworn to defend. The defeat 
of Abelard at the council of Sens showed that the drift 
of ideas was too much for him ; that even Scholasticism 
must recognize those limits which the dominant church 
had set. It marks, not the defeat of Scholasticism, but 
the capture of it by the conservative wing of the party 
of education. The church of St. Bernard did not seek 
a return to barbarism ; it demanded that all the intellect, 
as well as all the other forces of human society, should 
be turned to its service. Nor would it be true to say 
that Nominalism, with all that it represented, was definitely 
put down. It had received a severe blow and it was long 
before it could show its head again without disguise ; but as 
the middle period goes on, there runs through it a steady 
current of independent thought, which at its close takes on 
once more the same forms it had had in the beginning. 
The Nominalism of William of Occam at the beginning of 



c. 1200J THE TRIUMPH OF REALISM. 461 

the fourteenth century is the revival of the same instinct 
which had marked the thinking of RoscelUnus at the end of 
the eleventh. 

Between these two names is the golden age of the realistic 

scholasticism. Whatever deviations in form might from 

time to time show themselves, the one great 

R "^^i* principle that the truly important thing in the 
universe is the generality and the unimportant 
thing is the individual, governs European society in this 
interval. From this point of view alone can we understand 
the tenacity with which men clung to those great ideal insti- 
tutions, the empire and the church, holding on to them 
when all the actual forces of politics seemed to be proving 
them utterly useless. Only thus can we account for the 
tremendous hold on the minds of men of that vast world of 
the unseen, which to the mediaeval man was almost more 
real than the material world about him. What he called 
faith was to him vastly more than mere sight. The sum- 
mons to the crusade, for instance ; what could be more 
shadowy than this desire to recover six feet of earth in a 
distant land, which, when it was gained, could bring no 
visible advantage whatever to its possessors 1 Yet it was 
precisely this kind of a summons that appealed most 
powerfully to the " realistic " world of Europe, and it was 
not until the thoughts of men began to take on the opposite 
form that this summons lost its effect. 

So, again, it will be seen that the ideas of philosophic 

realism found an echo in the ascetic spirit of the time. If 

it was true that the individual man was of little 
Scholasti- . ... 

cism and the or no account m the great scheme of the universe, 

Ascetic what more natural than that he should sink him- 

Spirit. ... ... 

selt m a great mstitution, whose very essence 

was self-abnegation ? Bernard, the typical man of the 

Middle Ages, who starved and beat himself until his natural 



462 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [13th cent. 

humanity was almost driven out of him, was the true 
champion of the reaUstic idea against every assault that 
seemed likely to put the individual forward as something 
worth considering. What offended him in Abelard above 
all else was that Abelard dared to appeal to his own indi- 
vidual mind as to a witness worthy of hearing. Bernard lived 
to see almost a realization of the dream of Hildebrand. A 
celibate clergy bound to the papacy by ties of gratitude for 
favors past and to come ; the resistance of national powers 
broken one after the other by an appeal to the ideal sense 
of the people as against their allegiance to kings and princes 
of this world ; an elaborate philosophic scheme, developed 
expressly with the purpose of maintaining theoretically what 
the course of events had gained practically : this was indeed 
a brilliant triumph. 

The most striking illustration of the combination of all 
the intellectual forces of Europe into one great effort is seen 

in the case of the mendicant orders of St. 
cism and the Dominic and St. Francis. The original impulse 
Mendicant of these vast organizations was as far as possible 

from being an intellectual one. They repre- 
sent only the highest form of revival of the ascetic influence. 
Both the founders, the Spanish Dominic and the Italian 
Francis, were men of ecstatic fervor, converted from the life 
of the world to the life of the spirit, and recognizing the 
need there was of a new basis for the monastic work. The 
previous orders had aimed at seclusion from the world, and 
one after another had fallen a prey to the impulses of 
worldly ambition and love of ease and power. The new 
orders were to differ radically in this, that their very essence 
was to be in the world, not out of it. The vow of mendi- 
cancy itself was intended to express this same idea, that the 
friar was to go out and seek the very bread of his physical 
life while bearing to others the food of the spiritual life. 



1 3th cent.] THE MENDICANT SCHOLARS. 463 

The call for this new form of asceticism came at a crisis 

when the parish clergy and the previous monastic orders had 

shown themselves inadequate to meet the demand of the 

time. Its immediate and enormous success showed how 

well it had been planned. 

Almost from the first the new orders began to devote 

themselves to the field of philosophic study and production. 

The greatest names of the triumphant scholasti- 

Mendicant cism belong to them, and in them we see the 

c ars. union of learning and devotion in its clearest 

form. After Abelard the most notable name is that of 

Petrus Lombardus, not for any original merit, but for the 

skill with which he put into short and usable form 
Petrus ^ 

Lombardus. the most important doctrines of Christianity, with 

^^ ' a brief statement of the scholastic demonstration 

of them. He called his book Sente?itiae, and it became 

the starting-point for all future discussions of the Schools. 

His title is usually Magister Sententiarum. Then begins 

the series of the mendicant scholars. Alexander of Hales, 

a Gloucestershire Englishman, was the first 
Alexander ^ . , i i t^ • t^t- 

of Hales, rranciscan to teach theology at Pans. His 

Franciscan, commentary on the "sentences" took the form 
Died 1245. 

of a complete summa of Christian scientific, ?>., 

scholastic theology. He was called the doctor irrefragabilis . 

Albert "the Great" was a German Dominican, also a teacher 

at Paris and author of a simima theologica. In him we find 

perhaps the best example of the fine points of 
Albert , , • ,- , • r • 

the Great, scholastic dialectics as, tor instance, on the 

Dominican, question, "What happens if a mouse eats the 
Died 1280. ^ ' i 1 

consecrated host 1 " The amount of his learned 

production was incredible ; it fills twenty-one printed 

folio volumes. His greatest fame, however, in the later 

times is that he was the master of Thomas of Aquino 

(Aquinas), a Neapolitan, who, after finishing his studies, 



464 THE INTELLECTUAL LITE. [i 100-1300 

taught at Paris and at the principal seats of learning in 

Italy. His Siwima theologiae is by far the most famous 

and the most instructive of all the systematic 
Thomas . 

of Aquino, presentations of mediaeval theology. In three 

Dominican, different parts it takes up all the doctrines of 
Died 1274. , . 

Roman Christianity, and without casting a single 

doubt upon their absolute truth and binding force develops 

them along what seemed then to be scientific lines. His 

command of the whole scholastic machinery is complete, 

his logic, if one can admit his preconceptions, is close and 

accurate. His own time called him the doctor afigeiicus, and 

his book has remained to this day the classical exposition 

of Roman theology. When the present pope, Leo XIII, 

desired to stir up the energies of the Catholic world to meet 

the assault of modern learning with its own weapons, he 

could find no better way to do this than to commend 

the study of Thomas Aquinas. The Francis- 
Bonaventura, ^ ^ 

Franciscan, can order is represented by Thomas' contempo- 
Died 1274. j.^^.^ ^^^^ landsman, Bonaventura, in whom the 

scholastic and mystic tendencies were successfully com- 
bined, and by Duns Scotus, the doctor subtilis, an English- 

^ „ ^ man in whom the scholastic hair-splitting as 
Duns Scotus, . . 

Franciscan, a science reached its culmination. Perhaps 
Died 1308. because he was a Franciscan while Thomas 
was a Dominican, the later scholars of the two orders found 
it worth while to follow, each the example of his fellow-friar, 
and thus arose in the later Middle Ages the rival schools of 
the Thomists and the Scotists, between whom, however, 
there was no essential issue. Finally, when at the close of 
our period the intellectual process of the schools began to 
be changed, it was mainly Franciscans, before all others the 
Englishman, William of Occam, who lent themselves to the 
task of furnishing a new content as well as a new method 
to the thought of Europe. 



1 100-1300] RISE OF UNIVERSITIES. 465 

With this identification of philosophy with the church 

system, the work of scholasticism may be said to be done. 

Its great defects are evident to us ; its vast 

The Rise of services to the cause of learning, by keeping 
Universities. r>i j x- o 

alive the desire to justify faith by an appeal 

to the intellect, are more easily forgotten. One of its 

permanent results was the transfer of the most important 

seats of education from the monasteries and bishoprics to 

great municipal centres and the creation of a distinct class 

of learned men. That these were still, in one form or 

another, generally clergymen, did not cover the fact that 

learning was beginning to feel its feet and would soon be 

able to walk alone. 

The first fact for us to notice in connection with the 

mediaeval universities in general is, that they were never,/ 

^ . . .^. in any strict sense of the word, "founded" at 
Origin of tlie ■' ' 1 

Mediaeval all. All the ideas which we associate with the 
University, beginning of a great higher school, -^ the Uni- 
versity of Chicago, for example, — the raising of great sums 
of money, the securing of a corps of professors in the various 
lines of study, the building of structures appropriate to the 
purposes of teaching and investigation, the preparation of a 
complete course of study, to say nothing of skillful presenta- 
tion to the public of the advantages of the new foundation, 
all these ideas are wholly out of place when we try to under- 
stand the origin of a mediaeval university. 1. To us the term 
"university" suggests something complete, a school which 
offers all possible subjects of learning and which, in so far 
as it fails in this requirement, falls short of the true defini- 
tion. It suggests also something very high, and we are apt 
to say of some one of the many institutions of learning which 
call them.selves universities, "this is nothing but a college," 
meaning that its grade of teaching is largely elementary. 
Now neither of these ideas fits the mediaeval institution. 



466 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE. [i 100-1300 

The term univcrsitas meant nothing more than " all of them." 

or "all of us," or "all of you." It did not, at first, have 

even that notion of corporate unity which we connect with 

the word "corporation," meaning by that a body so far 

organized that it can act as a unit, and be dealt with by 

others as a thing having a distinct existence for itself. 

This word " imiversitas " was used quite as often for the 

whole body of the citizens of a town, or of the members of 

a e:uild, as it was for those who made up the 
The Earliest s , r , i • , , .- 

Forms of //body 01 scholars at a given seat of learnmg. 

Learned //These persons were teachers and learners who 

Association. / ' 

\ ^ ij had come together, each for his own purposes, 

the one set to teach and the other to learn, without organ- 
ization and without any regular connection of the body of 
the teachers with the body of the taught. Each scholar 
sought the teacher from whom he wished to learn and paid 
him for his instruction. Remnants of this idea still linger 
as, for instance, in the primitive custom of the " Stuhlgeld " 
in the German universities to-day. The essence of the 
mediaeval university, is, therefore, to be found in this idea 
of free association. It very soon passed out of its dis- 
organized condition and became regulated by more or less 
strict customs. Such regulation became, of course, neces- 
sary as soon as the number of scholars and teachers became 
great. Living as they did without buildings of their own, 
either for teaching or living purposes, they were thrown 
into the community of the city as a class not subject to 
the ordinary jurisdiction of the place, nor yet provided with 
any effective jurisdiction of their own. They were an 
[element of difficulty in any mediaeval town, and yet an 
^element which no town would like wholly to lose. 

The process of organization was different in different 
places. Sometimes, as at Bologna, the " universitas " in- 
cluded all scholars and all teachers. Elsewhere, as at Paris, 



1 100-1300] ORGANIZATION OF STUDY. 467 

it was the teachr-rs who formed the responsible body. Some- 
times a large part of the university authority was in the 

_.^^ hands of the so-called " nations," groups of lands- 

Differences . . 

in Organiza- men, into which the whole body of university 
tions. members was divided. ' Sometimes the nations 

were nothing more than convenient groupings for lesser ad- 
ministrative purposes. At some universities there was a 
single recognized head, — the "rector," usually chosen from 
among the teachers for a short term. At others the chief 
executive power was divided among a "college" of elected 
persons. 

From a very early day we can trace distinct differences 
of purpose in these higher schools. In some, as for 

instance, Paris and Oxford, the main purpose 
Specializa- ' ' r r 

tion of was what we should call "general culture." 

Study. This included, first, the so-called " quadrivium^^^ 

the group of scientific studies, arithmetic, geometry, as- 
tronomy and music, which rested upon a previous school 
study of the '■'• trivium,^'' the grammatical/ studies, grammar, 
rhetoric and logic. After the regular quadrivium, the one 
culture study pursued with special zeal during our period 
was that of dialectics, the art of reasoning about anything. 
Naturally the things best worth reasoning about were the 
theological matters we have been considering ; and we have 
once more to remind ourselves that this reasoning was not 
for the purpose of finding out whether the church doctrines 
were true, or even whether they were more or less true, but 
only to confirm their truth by an intellectual process. The ) 
great reputation of Paris and Oxford, in their respective 
countries, drew to them not only young men, but also mere 
children, who came for the trivial as well as the higher 
studies, and this probably accounts for the almost incredible 
reports of the immense numbers of students. In so far as 
these two schools had a specialty beyond the culture studies, 



468 ~ THE INTELLECTUAL LITE- [i 100-1300 

it was theology. Paris, in fact, became throughout the 
middle period, and for long after, the recognized authority 
on all points of theological dispute. 

At the other great universities more distinct specialization 
prevailed. At Bologna, for instance, there was a school of 
law going back,"4.we cannot tell how far, but 
a^^oio^a surely farther than the organization into a uni- 
versity. The law here studied was the ancient 
Roman code, the only body of law, in fact, which was in 
shape to be studied. During the whole of the twelfth 
century we find this study increasing, and drawing to itself 
much of that youthful energy which until then had been 
turned to the study of theology. At first this was opposed 
by the church on the ground that it was a heathenish study, 
likely to turn men against established institutions, but it 
was not long before the church recognized its interest here, 
as it did everywhere else, and made use of this new impulse 
for its own purposes.,' The law was also studied elsewhere, 
as for instance, at Orleans and Montpellier in France, but 
none of these lesser schools was able to dim the reputation 
of the Bolognese doctors. 

What we have just said of law at Bologna is true also of 
medicine at Salerno. It is quite possible that the claim of 
Salerno to be the oldest of the European universities is 
well-founded. At all events no one knows when the study 
of medicine began there. It is probably connected with the 
Arab influence in southern Italy; certainly the Arabs were 
far in advance of Europeans in the knowledge of physical 
life. The methods of the school at Salerno were in the last 
degree unscientific and crude. The knowledge of anatomy 
and physiology was based, not upon actual observation, but 
upon the writing of early Greek physicians filtered through 
Arab tradition. Any knowledge of the working of natural 
causes had in our period an uncanny flavor and could hardly 



r 



^ 



.iioo-1300] THE UNIVERSITY AS A CORPORATION. 469 

be separated, in the common mind, from the notion ot 
opposition to the working of the divine plan. Yet the repu- 
tation of the school of Salerno persisted and grew so that 
when Frederic II in 1224 organized the University of 
Naples, Salerno was left intact as the medical department of 
that national institution. 

The forms of administration and of instruction at the 

universities seem to have grown up by a natural process 

through the action of the members themselves ; 

University ^^^j. -^ gg^j-jy became evident that a higher sanction 
Charters. ■' ... 

would be useful, and the universities turned to 

some power outside of themselves to seek it. The munic- 
ipal governments within which they were living claimed 
and exercised more or less of the ordinary rights of police, 
but they could not be thought of as a source of law. There 
were two other powers, the state and the papacy, from 
which such sanction might come, and both were appealed 
to. We have here one of the most curious cases of that 
mingling of legal with religious ideas which prevailed 
throughout our period. The university stood in this respect 
very much like a monastery. It lay within a state and was 
therefore primarily subject to its laws ; but it had also some- 
thing of the clerical character, and this bound it, more or 
less as the case -might be, to the interest of the papacy. 
Every such grant by a pope was a renewed declaration of 
right and a new opportunity for asserting authority. 

The recognition of the universities by the states was 
generally earlier than that by the church. Salerno received 
First Recog- Privileges from Robert Guiscard who died in 

nitions of 1085, and from his son Roger before 11 00. 
Universities, t^- t^ tt i 1 ^ . • • 

Kmg Roger II ordered state exammations m 

medicine in 1137. Naples, a new creation, was organized 

by Frederic II in 1224. The first formal recognition of 

Bologna was by the emperor Frederic I in 1158, though it 



470 THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, [1100-1300 

is certain that there was organized teaching of law there 
long before. Pope Honorius II in 12 16 defended the 
students against attacks of the city magistrates on the basis 
of long established usages. The university statutes were 
confirmed by the pope in 1254. < Paris received its first dis- 
tinctive university privileges from Louis VII, who died in 
1 180; it was recognized in two bulls of Alexander III 
(died -1 181); it was much favored in 1200 by Philip August' -s; 
and it was on questions of privilege that the tumults of 1229 
broke out, which resulted in a permanent crippling of its 
resources. In England there was, undoubtedly, a collecdon 
of higher teachers at Oxford as early as 1130, and at Cam- 
bridge, probably, as early as 1200; how much eciflier at 
both places we cannot say,jthough the tradition of extreme 
antiquity, say from the days of Alfred, is now entirely 
rejected. The English universities profited by the overturn 
in Paris in 1229, and we may certainly date from this time 
their active corporate life. 

The preservation of the university freedom was one of the 
most precious means of saving learning from the control of 
. parties, no matter what, that might wish to turn 

versity it to their advantage. The church promoted it, 

Free om. because it saw its profit in so doing. It lent all 
the weight of its authority to keep learning from being 
oppressed by city magistrates and petty rulers, asking only 
that what was taught should not go against its traditions. 
So long as this harmony between the papal institution and 
the learning of the world could be maintained, learning was 
only one more pillar of the Roman structure ^but when, at 
the close of our period, men began to depart from the ruts 
in which they had been moving and let their thought go on 
into new fields of inquiry, then these universities became 
the homes of a new culture, destined to drive the papacy 
from its advantage. Wiclif, Hus and Luther were, from the 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

LITERATURE. 

¥c . SL brief notice of the controversies as to the origin of feudalism in 

Europe, see Introduction to Study of the Middle Ages, chapter xv. 
The statutes of the Empire, together with other materials for constitu- 
tional history, are to be found in the Momcmenta Germaniae, Leges ii. 
Brussel, N. Nouvel Examen de I'Usage general des fiefs en France ; 

with many documents. 2 vols, 4to. 1750. 
LuCHAiRE, A. Manuel des Institutions Francaises sous les Capetiens 

directs. 1892. 
Prevost, G. a. L'Eglise et les campagnes ail Moyen-Age. 1892. A 

very interesting study of the parish clergy in the rural districts of 

France. 
Bourgeois, Emile. Le capitulaire de Kiersy-sur-Oise (877). 1885. 

A very careful study of the beginnings of the inheritance of fiefs 

in France. 
Molinier, a. Administration feodale dans le Languedoc, in Hic^oire 

de Languedoc. vol. vii. 1879. 
Seignobos, Ch. Le Regime feodal en Bourgogne jusqu'en 1360. 1882. 
Numerous references on special feudal topics in the notes to Luchaire, 

Manuel. 
See also, for French institutions, several of the works referred to under 

Chap. xii. 
Waitz, G. Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte. 8 vols. 1880 sqq. The 

principal modern authority for German political institutions. 
Stobbe, O. Geschichte der deutschen Rechtsquellen. 2 vols. 1864. 
Brunner, H. Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte. 2 vols. 1887-1892. The 

most striking recent presentation of German constitutional law. 
Schroder, R. Lehrbuch der deutschen Rechtsgeschichte. 2d ed. 

1894. 
Savigny, C. Geschichte des romischen Rechts im Mittelalter. 2d ed. 

7 vols. 1881. 



478 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

Bethmann-Hollweg, M. A. Der germanisch-romanische ovlJ, • 
cess im Mittelalter. 3 vols. 1874. 

Gautier, Le'on. La Chevalerie. New ed. 1890. Beautifully illus- 
trated and with bibliography. 

Feudalism is an organization of society based upon the 
absence of a strong controlling power at the centre :: 
the state. Such a central power when it exists 
Tlie niay be purely monarchical, or it may, as in a 

X!/SS6I1C6 01 , , , 

Feudalism, vigorous democracy, have its roots in a wide and 
deep sense of unity among all the members of 
the political com'munity. In either of these cases the 
result will be the same ; each individual citizen will feeL 
himself bound primarily by his duty to the central adminis-j; 
trative power. He will obey its call to arms, he will bringi 
his quarrels before its courts for arbitration, and he will pay 
his taxes for its support. In the absence of any such 
controlling force at the centre of affairs, the individual is 
released from these obligations and is free to combine with 
other members of the body politic on such terms as his 
interest may dictate. His sword is his own ; with it he may 
seek justice for himself, without the formality of courts of 
law, and as for taxes, since the central power has little to 
do, it needs little money to do it with ; a demand for taxes 
under these conditions appears to the free citizen like an 
invasion of his rights. 

We associate the word " feudalism " with the European 
Middle Ages, but the thing has been by no means confined 
to Europe or to our period. It has taken shape 
FeudaUsm in many places and among many different 
toEoTope.^ peoples where the conditions just described 
have been more or less perfectly realized. For 
instance in Japan, until within our generation, a system of 
political orders had for centuries prevailed, which was 
almost precisely that with which we are now to deal. So 



JTAGES OF FEUDALISM. 479 

iieJcin rule in Africa and Spain, the forms 

.-.larchy could not prevent a similar development. 

.>c bea: these facts in mind we shall have less trouble 

• .king ourseb'cs clear as to the sources from which 

,dalism in Europe was derived. We shall see 

.hal its origin is not to be sought for in analogous 

nstitutions in Rome or in Germany, but rather 

atary and economic conditions under which the 

ne A'ly formed peoples of western Europe found themselves ; 

conditions which then rapidly developed tendencies arising 

doubtless from a remote inheritance. For our purposes we 

may fairly assume that the feudal idea in Europe has its 

roots in a natural instinct of the Germanic peoples to live 

under as little centralized control as possible, an instinct 

which has given way only at crises when some great national 

enterprise demanded for the moment the sacrifice of personal^ 

freedom for the common good. " -^ 

During the great migrations in the period preceding ours 

we see very impressive illustrations of such sacrifice and, 

as a result, the formation of several Germanic 
Feudal .... 

Theory and national unities under monarchical forms. Only 

Feudal one of these survived and that not the one in 

System. 

which the monarchical feeling was the strongest. 

By the time of Charlemagne the feudal idea was definitelv 

established and needed only favorable conditions to develop 

rapidly into the feudal system. The idea is a very simple 

one ; the system which grew out of it is one of the most 

complicated ever developed in human society. So long as 

Charlemagne lived, the force of his great personality and 

the enthusiasm aroused by his immense success were enough 

to keep the centralizing agencies of his government active 

and effectual. In weaker hands this side of the Prankish 

policy declined and gave room for political individualism to 

have its way. 



480 THE FEUDAL INST'TL 

Then we begin to see, gaining r.-)jd] 
a re-organization of society. The freeman 

his hands, makes terms with 'he ioyai .. 
Ste^s^to "^^ "° longer follows without question '^*. c?: 
814. arms ; he begins to despise the siii> :ion 

court of justice and to resent ii ' 
taxes as an affront to his personal dignity. \ 
ones among the free subjects, already in possessica or , 
advantages of wealth and territorial influence, begin 
make themselves so many centres of actual power and v> 
attach the lesser freemen to themselves by the ho;)e of 
action or of defense in war and of reward in peace. The 
relation between higher and lower freemen is one of per- 
sonal contract for mutual advantage. Formally it recognizes 
a still higher duty to the state, but only formally ; in 
practice the allegiance to the state is overshadowed and 
obseiired by the nearer and closer tie of lord and vassal. 
That is the fundamental distinction of feudalism in its 
political aspect ; it cuts the tie between the government 
and the citizen, leaving the citizen free to associate himself 
as he pleases with subordinate and intermediate powers. 

By the death of Charlemagne the earlier steps in this 

transformation of European society had been taken and we 

„ . , have already traced their consequences in the 

Basis of ^ ^ 

Feudalism a movement of outward politics on a great scale. 
Gift of Land, j^ now becomes of interest to note more care- 
fully the growth of the feudal institutions themselves. The 
tie by which the higher freeman bound the lower one to 
himself was ordinarily a gift of the use of a certain tract of 
land, together with more or less extensive rights of jurisdic- 
tion over the dwellers thereon. By means of this gift he 
secured the service of the lesser man in war, and as war 
was the normal condition of things, such service was the 
most valuable payment he could receive. 



EARLY STAGES OE EEUDALISM. 481 

Such a g \ wi;, originally thought of as depending on 

the will o\ the owner and the fidelity of the receiver. 

If the lord chose he might recall it or, if the 

^flJl^f?^^ '^ roan '' failed in his duty, the contract was void, 
at Will. ■" 

and the land came back to the lord, to be given, if 

he pleased, to some one else. So long as tenures of this 

kind were something exceptional and did not form the main 

support of the vassal class, the looseness of the tie was no 

great disadvantage. But, as the system grew, and men 

came to see the value of such holdings, and were putting 

more and more of their property into them, it was seen 

that a firmer tenure would be more advantageous. Thus 

came the granting of land during the life of the tenant. 

Still this was not enough. The family of the tenant yet 

remained without claim upon the property and the head of 

the family could not will it to them if he would. The great 

uncertainties of a military life emphasized this difficulty 

and helped, undoubtedly, to bring about the next great step, 

the inheritance of fiefs. 

The date usually assigned for the formal beginning of 

inheritance as a right is the year 877, and the occasion was 

_. , , the departure of King Charles the Bald for 

Fiefs Decome ^ ^ . 

Hereditary. Italy. By the famous edict of Kiersy,^ the text 

of which is fortunately preserved to us in a 

careful recent copy, Charles undertook to regulate the 

1 Text of the edict of Kiersy as proclaimed on June 14, 877. In 
Mo7t. Germ., Leges, i, p. 542 : 

Si comes de i;f o regno obierit, cujus filius nobiscum sit, filius noster cum ceteris 
iidelibus nostris ordinet de his qui eidem comiti plus famiUares ac propinquiores 
fuerunt, qui cum ministerialibus ipsius comitatus et cum episcopo in cujus 
parochia fuerit ipse comitatus ipsum comitatum praevideant, usque dum nobis 
renuntietur, ut fiUum illius qui nobiscum erit de honoribus illius lionoremus. 

Si autem filium parvulum habuerit. isdem filius ejus cum ministerialibus ipsius 
comitatus, et cum episcopo in cujus parochia consistit, eumdem comitatum prae- 
videant, donee obitus praefati comitis ad notitiam perveniat nostram, et ipse 
filius ejus per nostram concessionem de illius honoribus honoretur. 



482 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS, 

conditions of property during his absence. The clause 
here in question provided that, if during this time a vassal, 
whether of the king himself or of any other lord, should 
die, leaving heirs or not, his estate should be held unim- 
paired by the regency until the will of the king should be 
made known. If the deceased left a son who was with the 
army in Italy, this son should receive his father's honores, 
i.e., his feudal rights ; if he left a minor son, he too was to 
be kept in security until he could receive the king's investi- 
ture. If there was no heir, an administrator was to be 
appointed, and he need not take it ill if, on the king's de- 
cision, he did not receive the fief of which he had been 
made guardian. Earlier historians were accustomed to lay 
all the emphasis here upon the implied promise of the king 
that he w^ould keep the fiefs in the family of the holder, but 
it is very clear that the king's own intention was to empha- 
size equally the royal right in disposing of vacant fiefs. 
The edict thus illustrates two important phases of feudal 
development at once. 

With this step the outline of the feudal system may be 
regarded as complete. It remained to fill it in with the new 
body of social, political and military institutions demanded 
by so complete a revolution in society. 

It should be borne in mind that the conversion of lands 
, held in fee simple, i.e.., in free ownership (" allo- 

Terre sans dial " lands), into feudal proprietorships went on 
Seigneur." ^^ ^ different pace and to varying degrees in dif- 
ferent parts of Europe. On the whole it was more rapid and 

Si vero filium non habuerit, filius noster cum ceteris fidelibus nostris ordinet, 
qui cum ministerialibus ipsius comitatus, et cum episcopo proprio ipsum comita- 
tum praevideat, donee jussio nostra inde fiat. Et pro hoc ille non irascatur qui 
ilium comitatum praeviderit si eumdem comitatum alteri cui nobis placuerit 
dederimus, quam ille qui eum eatenus praevidit. 

Similiter et de vassallis nostris faciendum est. Et volumus atque praecipimus 
ut tarn episcopi quam abbates et comites seu etiam ceteri fideles nostri hoc 
erga homines suos studeant conservare. 



\ 



INHERITANCE. — THE EIEF. 483 

more complete in the Germanic, slower and less complete in 
the Romanic countries, but at the close of our period it was 
possible for the maxim '' nulle terre sans seigneur'''' to be laid 
down as a general principle, evidently a very convenient 
one for the suzerain when vacant lands were in question. 

The fief {feudu7?i), technically so-called, was generally a 
landed estate held by a noble on condition of paying to the 
owner a kind of service regarded as honorable, 
o/the Fi5 primarily, of course, military service ; but also 
including such duties as attendance at the lord's 
court, his escort on a journey, or his proper entertainment 
when on a visit. Such a holding was distinguished from 
various other forms of precarious tenure, and especially from 
those by which the holder paid to the owner a census or 
money-rent, or performed services regarded as dishonorable, 
such, for example, as manual labor in the field. It is here 
that the great social distinctions which mark our whole 
period take form. The nobleman, high or low, is the holder 
of a fief ; the ?^ot7irier or commoner is the man who owes to 
the lord the work of his hands, or a money substitute therefor. 

The basis of every feudal holding was a contract, ex- 
pressed or implied, between owner and holder. Probably in 

a majority of cases the beo^innino- of this contract 
The Feudal , . , . , , . 

Contracts was lost in obscurity; but the existence of a 

applied first tradition was prima facie evidence that it had 
to Land. . 

once been made, and from time to time general 

examinations of titles {f-ecognitiones feudo7^uni) were made by 

kings or great feudal lords within their own provinces, and 

the results of such examinations furnished a basis for future 

claims. It would be safe to say that a very large proportion 

of all the private wars in our period were caused by this 

sort of uncertainty as to land-titles, and by the absence of 

any strong central executive power to give and enforce 

decisions between claimants. 



484 l^HE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

The great advantage of the feudal relation, and at the 
same time the source of its greatest confusions, was its 
E te d d flexibility. As this advantage came to be felt, it 
from Land was used by ambitious princes to extend their 
" ^^^^ control over all kinds of service, not merely over 
that connected with land. For example, in order to provide 
for the suitable maintenance of what we call the civil service, 
in all its stages, from the highest judicial functions down to 
menial labor, it became customary to let public officials 
change their offices into fiefs, without any connection with 
land, the official paying himself with the fees of his office, 
and holding his place by the same hereditary tenure as the 
landed vassal. Still further, as with time the demand for 

soldiers became greater than the landed fiefs 
an oney ^^q^]^ supply, even " money-iiefs " were invented, 

whereby a prince granted a fixed sum, yearly, to 
a vassal on condition of due performance of military service. 
Of course one sees at once that this was nothing more nor 
less than hiring soldiers at yearly wages, but it is, perhaps, 
the best illustration we have of how completely the feudal 
notion of personal obligation had come to be the only 
effective agency in controlling mediaeval society. If we 
allow ourselves here to take one step further and suppose, — 
as was frequently the case, — that the person thus hiring 
soldiers was the king, we find ourselves at a point where the 
feudal theory must soon destroy itself. The later merce- 
nary soldier, hired outright for money wages without any 
feudal formalities, is the chief agent in destroying the whole 
mediaeval fabric. 

The question of inheritance of the fief was early deter- 
mined, but the principle of the inheritance varied greatly 
with place and time. The all-important point was that the 
service prescribed in the contract and confirmed by custom 
should not be diminished. The lief must therefore be 



rRJMO GENirURE. — A LIEN A TION. 485 

kept in a strong hand and must not be divided. From this 

necessity came two results, primogeniture and the exclusion 

of females. Whether an equal division among 
The , T . . 1 11 

Principle of ^ons was the earlier practice is not clear; at all 

Inheritance events, the advantage of keeping the fief together 
in Fiefs. i . „ . , 

was so great that the pressure was all in that 

direction, and it generally prevailed. The crown found it 
far more convenient to deal with one than with a mass of 
conflicting allegiances, and the extension of the feudal prin- 
ciple to properties other than land offered numerous ways of 
providing for younger sons no less honorably and often more 
profitably. The emphasis laid upon the unity of the fief 
was a preparation for the larger unity of the realm. The 
exclusion of women from the succession seemed at first 
inevitable since the primary duties of the feudatory, war 
and justice, could not be performed by them in person. 
As the feudal order became better defined, however, these 
difiiculties were overcome, and in the end the daughter of 
a noble house shared regularly with the sons all privileges 
of succession excepting that of primogeniture. 

It was equally important to the lord, and especially so to 

the king, that the fief should remain in good hands, and 

hence he claimed a right to control its alienation, 

limited hy under the form of sale or what not. In fact, 

the Lord's in early sales, it is the lord who appears as the 
Consent. i i • • i i i i 

vendor, but in time the vassal makes the con- 
tract of sale, alleging the consent of the lord and finally, 
dispensing with this consent, he may make the sale on his 
own account, but must pay to the lord a fee sometimes 
known as a relief in acknowledgment of his superior rights. 

The same general principle applies to any diminu- 

inunu ion ^^^^ ^£ ^j^^ ^ r g^^j^ jf^j. instance, as the eman- 
also limited. ' ' ' 

cipation of a serf, by which a piece of property 

belonging to the fief was, so far as the lord's interest was 



486 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

concerned, lost. Here, too, the lord — frequently the king 
— appears originally as a party to the transaction ; it is he 
who frees the serf of his vassal. Next he demands the right 
to approve the manumission and to annul it if made without 
his consent. Finally, he contents himself with a money 
payment or compensation for the injury to the lief. 

By far the most interesting form of diminution is the gift 
or sale to a religious body — or as the phrase was, iii jjianmn 
mortnam (amortissement^ mortmain). These words 
Mo tmain i^^^'^ply that property given to the church was, in 
so far, dead to the state, and under the pressure 
of religious ideas the danger that great masses of land 
would cease to be profitable parts of the public territory 
was a very real one. Here the consent of the suzerain was 
most important and was frequently refused. Sometimes 
estates were regularly granted subject to the condition that 
they should not be alienated to the church. But here, too, 
the chance for a revenue was soon perceived. Lords sold 
to churches or monasteries the right to acquire lands within 
the compass of their liefs. At first such control was exer- 
cised only by the immediate suzerain of the person making 
the gift ; but gradually it came to be seen that a diminution 
of any fief affected every superior lord, even up to the king, 
and so we find, at the close of our period, the right of iDuor- 
tissemcnt claimed as a pure royal privilege, from which only 
the very highest feudatories were exempt. 

In its social aspect feudalism presents as its most dis- 
tinctive feature the clear and sharp distinction between 
the noble and the commoner. In its early stages 

-- ^.,.t^ this distinction is often obscure, but from the 

Nobility. ' 

time of the inheritance of fiefs it grows rapidly 
more marked and becomes, finally, the basis of that group- 
ing of men into hard and fast classes, which is the most 
decisive element in mediaeval society. Nobility consisted 



ESSENCE OF NOBILITY. 487 

primarily of two distinct qualities : first, the hereditary pos- 
session of a landed estate, which carried with it the obliga- 
tion to the higher forms of service, and second, the fitness 
for service on horseback, the chevalerie. In the second case, 
as in the first, the qualification was originally one of 
property, and implied the ability to furnish the very expen- 
sive equipment necessary to the duty of the cavalier. The 
combination of this idea with that of landed property and of 
" good " birth secured in the service of the lord an e'lite 
corps of fighting men, and naturally, in a semi-barbaric 
society, this select group and their families formed the high- 
est aristocracy and the dominant force in society. The 

qualification of birth tended to harden this 
Ennoblement. . . ^ . , . 

aristocracy mto a class., m the strictest sense of 

that term, and it was only with difiicnlty that its barriers 
could be passed. One way was that a roturier acquired, 
through purchase or otherwise, a terra iiobiiis, I.e., an estate 
to which the quality of nobility was attached ; another way 
was that a king or great noble granted to a commoner a 
patent of nobility, thereby conferring on land in his posses- 
sion the noble quality, which then passed to his children. 
It is evident that such creation of new nobles would be a 
welcome means of attaching persons to the interests of the 
crown, but during our period it was seldom, if ever, resorted 
to ; in fact, it marks the time when the institutions of royalty 
were beginning to prevail over those of feudalism proper. 
Nobility ^^^ noble quality passed originally only in the 

throngli male line, but later, in conformity with the same 

tendency we have noticed in connection with the 
inheritance of fiefs, the noblewoman could convey nobility 
to her descendants by union even with a ?'oti(j'ier. 

With the second element of nobility, the chevalerie, we 
come to the most picturesque aspect of mediaeval society. 
The burdensome duty of following a lord at one's own 



488 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

expense became, as the feudal order settled into form and 

the resources of the aristocracy increased with improved 

agriculture, the hisrhest honor and dignity of 
Chevalerie. » ' » ^ : 

the feudal gentleman. Mounted on his horse, 

which like himself was encased in an impenetrable armor, 

he was more than a match for a score of unarmed and un- 

armored commoners. Combined with others of his class he 

could terrorize a great extent of country and hold, perhaps, 

hundreds or even thousands of dependents in obedience. 

Of course if his administration of his estate was cruel or 

unjust beyond endurance, means of final redress were not 

wanting ; but in ordinary conditions the balance of duties 

and obligations on one side and the other held in equilibrium 

a social order which at first sight appears to us wanting in 

every element of stability. 

The relation of the vassal to the lord included the two 

elements of the homagiiim and the fidelitas^ ideas nearly 

„ . related but quite independent in their history. 

Homagium . 

and Th.& Jidelitas applied not only to the vassal but to 

Fide itas. ^Y\ the free inhabitants of his estates; all were 
Jldeles, but only the sworn feudal subject was the homo. The 
act of homage was simple but impressive. The man sought 
the lord in person, was received by him with some formality, 
knelt before him, laid his hands in those of the lord and de- 
clared himself to be his " man " for such and such a fief. 
Then the lord raised him from the ground and gave him the 
kiss of peace upon his lips. After this came the oath of 
fidelity, taken upon the Gospels or upon the relics of saints. 
The obligations assumed by the oaths of homage and 
fidelity varied greatly with the customs of the 

Feudal country and the circumstances of the special con- 

OWigfations ^^_ , . . , .... 

of the Vassal, tract. Without gomg mto these distmctions we 

may group the feudal duties under the three 

headings, military, civil and financial. Most important 



OBLIGATIONS OF THE VASSAL. 489 

were, naturally, the military. The vassal bound himself, 

not merely in a general way, to serve his lord in war when 

called upon, but specifically to present himself 
I. MiUtary. . , . ' ^ ^ ^\^ ^ ^ 

with a given number ot loliowers or such and 

such condition and to serve for a definite time annually at 
his own expense. This time was usually forty days. At 
its expiration the vassal was no longer bound to gratuitous 
service. If he consented to remain in the field it must be at 
the expense of the lord. As our period draws towards its 
close, we notice an increasing tendency to convert the 
service of duty into a money payment, with which the lord 
was able to hire soldiers at his discretion and, if need 
were, to use them against the very dangerous subjects from 
whom he drew his revenue. Besides direct service in the 
field the vassal was bound to hold his castles wholly at the 
service of the lord, who might at any moment, upon due 
summons, occupy them for a military purpose, but was 
bound, on his part, to return them in the same condition in 
which he received them. In fact the suzerain retained a 
right to general control over all the fortresses of his vassals. 
They could neither build new nor demolish old ones without 
his permission. The fortress of the vassal was thought of 
not as real estate, going with the land, but as an implement 
of war over which the suzerain must keep an especial 
control. Not only this; the vassal was bound upon demand 
to guard the castle of his lord during his absence or under 
stress of any other peculiar need. 

In accordance with ancient Germanic precedent, con- 
tinued with great care during the Carolingian 
oiblieTtio time, no act' of importance could be undertaken 
especially by any prince, royal or other, without consulting 
^^ ? the powers through whom it must be carried 

out. Hence came the right and the duty of the 
vassal to sit with his lord in judgment or in council. No 



490 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

prince exercised alone judicial functions in the strict sense 
of the word. He only presided over a court, in which the 
actual judgment was found by a bench of lower persons, 
the peers i^pares) of him who sought justice before them. 
Precious as this right of phicitum was, it early became a 
somewhat burdensome one, and we have abundant evidence 
that vassals sought in many ways to evade this as they did 
also the equally precious and honorable duty of military 
service. Limitations upon the right of the lord to summon 
them to judicial service begin to grow frequent ; usually the 
vassal was bound to attend court only three times a year, at 
Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and even these times were 
evaded, if possible. So important was this service held to 
be that its refusal carried with it, in theory, the loss of the 
fief. On the other hand, it cannot escape observation that 
an ambitious suzerain, by encouraging evasion of court duty 
might, with comparative ease, concentrate the whole admin- 
istration of justice in the hands of a narrow group of 
personal followers and thus overturn the whole principle of 
mediaeval justice, while maintaining its outward forms. 
This was really what took place in some great fiefs, though 
in theory a refusal on the part of the suzerain to call 
the court according to the customs of the land made him 
liable to loss of his suzerainty. 

In theory the duty of the noble vassal towards his lord 
was a purely personal one and to commute it for a money 

payment was a degradation of the whole feudal 
oibUffa^ns relation. The payment of money, especially if 

it were a fixed and regular payment, carried with 
it a certain ignoble idea against which, in the form of state 
taxation, the feudal spirit rebelled to the last. When the 
vassal agreed to pay something to his lord, he called it, not' 
a tax, but an " aid " (anxiliiwi), and made it generally 
payable, not regularly, like the tax-bill of the citizen, but 



OBLIGATIONS OF THE VASSAL. 491 

only upon certain occasions — a present, as it were, coming 
out of his good-will and not from compulsion ; e.g.., when- 
ever a fief was newly granted, when it changed its 
"Aids." . 

lord, and sometimes when it changed its vassal, 

it was from the beginning customary to acknowledge the 
investiture by a small gift to the lord, primarily as a symbol 
of the grant ; then, as the institution grew and manners 
became more luxurious, the gift increased in value and was 
thought of as an actual price for the investiture, until 
finally, at the close of our period, it suffered the fate of all 
similar contributions and was changed into a definite money 
payment, still retaining, however, its early name of "relief." 
The amount varied immensely according to the size of 
the fief but was in any case a very considerable burden, 
and was sometimes equal to a year's revenue of the estate. 
In the case of alienations, whether by way of sale, manu- 
mission, or amortissemefit, the vassal paid a compensation 
varying from a small percentage on the value of the 
alienated property to several years' income from it, if it 
were in land. 

The occasions for levying the aids were various but 
always, in theory, of an exceptional sort. The journey of 
a lord to the court of his suzerain, or to Rome, or to join a 
crusade, the knighting of his eldest son, the marriage of his 
eldest daughter and his ransom from imprisonment are 
among the most frequent of the feudal ' aids.' The 
right of the lord to be entertained and provisioned, together 

with all his followinpf, was one of the most 
Droit deGite. , , ^ ^ . ,..^ , 

burdensome and, at the same time, most difficult 

to regulate. Its conversion into a money-tax was, perhaps 

for this reason, earlier than that of many other of the feudal 

contributions. 

The history of feudalism is that of a constant struggle 

between the rights of the lord and those of the vassal, the 



492 THE FEUDAL IXSTITUTIOXS. 

balance being steadily maintained by the fact that, as the 

system grew more complete, every lord, except the highest, 

^^ T, , was also a vassal, and every vassal, except the 

The Balance ' ^ . . 

of Class lowest, was also a lord. Indeed, the king him- 

interests. ^^^i might well, for certain lands, be a vassal 

of one of his own vassals, and a simple knight might have 

seignorial rights over one of his own lords. Had it not 

been for this interlocking of interests society would have 

resolved itself into a class of lords over against a class of 

vassals. Indications of such a danger are to be found in 

the conflict of rights on certain definite points, e.g., in 

case of the minority of a vassal, it was plainly 

The Rf§:W of j^orainst the interest of the lord to lose the 
Guardianship. * 

service of the fief, and hence, in the early stages 

of feudalism, we find frequent cases of the exercise of what 
was known as the right of guardianship, i.e., the administra- 
tion of the.fief and the enjoyment of its revenues by the 
lord during the minority. On the other hand, it was plainly 
the interest of the vassal's family to tide over this interval, 
and thus to keep the revenues in their hands. To do this 
they must in some way meet the obligations resting on the 
fief, and thus grew up the custom of guardianship by the 
tenant family as a whole, as against the guardianship of the 
lord. The same conflict and a similar solution took place 
in regard to prolonged absences of the vassal as, for 
example, on a pilgrimage or a crusade. 

Another illustration is the right of the seignior to confiscate 
the fief in default of legitimate heirs. Who were heirs ? 

The early tendency was for the lord to exercise 
^^?* ? t^^is right as strictly as possible, and to take 

back his fief if a direct legitimate descendant 
were not in sight. On the other hand, the interest of the 
vassal family demanded that the circle of inheritance should 
be as wide as possible; and thus we see the side branches 



OBLIGATIONS OF VASSAL AND LORD. 493 

more and more generally admitted to the succession. 
Ordinarily, of course, this family interest was not really 
opposed to that of the lord; so long as the. service was duly 
rendered there was no visible reason for a change of tenant. 
Still, the widening of the right of inheritance was a limita- 
tion upon his freedom of action and might often stand in 
the way of his placing a relative or friend where he would 
do the most good. 

Still more striking is the progress of ideas in regard to 
confiscation for cause. In theory the violation of the con- 

^ , .^ tract by the vassal broupfht with it a total release 

Forfeiture or -^ ^ 

Confiscation of the obligations of the lord. Such violation 
or Cause. might be: a refusal of homage; refusal of 
military service or the use of a fortress ; violation of com- 
mon or express laws of the lordship ; open war or resist- 
ance against the lord. In any one of these cases the 
vassal, on due summons and after sentence uy the lord's 
court, might be ousted from his fief, which would then, 
naturally, be given to another holder. Such confiscations, 
frequent in the early records, become less and less so as 
time goes on, until finally the delinquent vassal was simply 
suspended for a time from the enjoyment of the fief, or 
was even allowed to commute his offense by the payment 
of a fine. Only in extraordinary cases, and those usually 
such as involved an element of politics, do we find the 
extreme sentence of deposition carried out. An example 
would be the deprivation of Henry the Lion through sen- 
tence of the court of Frederic Barbarossa. 

In all these cases we see the same principle, the growing 
power of the feudal idea and an increasing sense of fixed- 
ness in all its details as compared with the looseness of the 
tie in its early stages. On the other hand, we cannot fail to 
notice also a growing sense of the right of the vassal to his 
property, and thus a preparation for the great reaction of 
the modern period against the whole feudal theory. 



494 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

We have thus far emphasized especially the obligations 

of the vassal ; those of the seignior were no less definite 

^ , , and bindinp-. The duties of the vassal may be 

Feudal * •' 

Obligations summed up in the one word " service," those of 
of the Lord, ^j^^ ^^^^ l^ ^j^^ ^^^ ^,^^^ "protection." The 

chief duties of the lord were to protect his vassal against 

enemies, to grant him full justice before the law, and to 

abstain from any form of violence against him or against 

the members, especially the female members, of his house. 

Denial of any of these obligations gave the vassal the 

right to demand justice of the lord's suzerain and to 

withdraw his allegiance until justice should be done. 

The seignior is bound further not to divert to himself 

the allegiance of the sub-vassal, not to build fortresses 

on the land of his vassal, not arbitrarily to increase the 

burdens of taxation, expecially by new {inauditae) demands, 

and not to alienate the fief to the disadvantage of its 

holder. 

As a result of these mutual rights and obligations feudal 

society was able to hold itself together ; — but barely this. 

, , We must again remind ourselves that these forms 

Inadeauacy ° 

of the Feudal of law and order covered over but thinly the 
Relation. actual barbarism of the mediaeval world. The 
one thing really effective and valuable to the mediaeval mind 
was personal strength and courage. The exercise of this 
virtue was, normally, always in order. The strong man 
was always in the right. Religion adapted itself to this 
primary need of man, and declared that victory in battle 
or in single combat was the judgment of God. Legal forms 
were invented to limit and regulate the action of the indi- 
vidual fighter, but the fundamental right to seek reparation 
for his wrongs was not questioned. 

Only by balancing these two things, the set of institu- 
tions we have just been examining and the almost universal 



DEFECTS OF FEUDAL OBLIGATION. 495 

approval of private warfare, can we at all comprehend the 
movement of mediaeval life. In their practical working 
the feudal institutions were constantly thrown out of gear by 

the prevailing lack of respect for all law but that 
of Gainingr of the sword ; e.g.., the oppressed vassal had 
Jus ice. ^^ undeniable right to seek for justice at the 

court of the suzerain to whom his lord was responsible, but 
in practice such an appeal was generally impossible. It 
involved the vassal in a long and expensive journey, during 
which his family and his goods were exposed to the ven- 
geance of his enemy. It obliged the overlord to bring an 
action against a vassal with whom he, personally, was prob- 
ably well contented. Success in his suit would certainly 
bring upon the sub-vassal a deadly feud with his lord and 
all his house. How much simpler to make common cause 
with other similarly oppressed vassals and fight it out like 
men ! All society — except a few shaven pa,tes — would 
applaud, and God would know his own. 

The same difficulty appears if we test any one of the 
limitations we have been considering. The lord must not 

try to gain over the vassals of his vassal to his 
zat^n ^ ^" ^^^ direct allegiance ; yet, during our whole 

period, there is in France a steady drift in this 
direction, tending to the formation of direct ties between 
the lesser nobility and the great territorial lords and so, 
ultimately, helping to consolidate the royal power. The 
vassal may not, legally, renounce his allegiance to one lord 
and carry it over to another ; yet nothing is commoner than 
such a transfer. Especially was this the case in border 
countries as, for instance, in Alsace and Lorraine where 
one can never, for any great length of time, be sure of 
finding the land subject either to France or to Germany. 
In the inventories of fiefs in France, it is not unusual to 
find a record " suzerain unknown." 



496 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

The effort of all well-meaning rulers was, not to overturn 

the feudal arrangements, but to ascertam them. Such was 

r. ^s:- X. the purpose, for instance, of the codifications of 
Codifications r r j j 

of Feudal customary law known in France as coutumes and 
^^* in Germany as Spiegel., which were made in the 

latter part of the twelfth and the early part of the thirteenth 
centuries. The most famous in France is perhaps the 
custom of Beauvais by a jurist named Beaumanoir, and in 
Germany the Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of Saxony) a glass 
indeed, wherein we may read the law feudal and otherwise, 
as it was in North Germany at the time (about 1220). 
These codifications were not, be it understood, legislation 
or law-making ; they did not even proceed from any public 
authority, but were only manuals of the law as it was, made 
by men of law for the information of magistrates whose 
business it was to find the verdict in the regular practice 
of the courts. 

In the second stage of the feudal hierarchy, far more than 

in the highest, we find real centres of administrative power. 

Two names come to be here distinctive, the duke 

The Great ^^^ ^j^^ count. If we look at the history of these 
Feudatories. ■' 

titles we find that they represent two very dis- 
tinct traditions. The duke (dicx, Ilerzog) was primarily a 

military leader and thus, naturally, the head of 
The Duke. ^ . ■ . . ^ L 1 

a race or of a region, bound to its members or 

its inhabitants by the same tie of allegiance which later 

forms the principle of nationality. The count 
The Count. , ^ ^x 1,11 • m 

(comes, Graf), on the other hand, was primarily 

the official of a higher power. His relation to the people 
and to the region he governed was a purely administrative 
one and did not, at first, identify him with the interests of 
his subjects. The best illustrations of the ducal idea are 
the great stem rulers of Germany and, in France, the power- 
ful lords of Normandy in the north and of Aquitaine in the 



THE FEUDAL HIERARCHY. 497 

south. In all these regions the derivation of power from 
the district itself, independently of any commission from 
any superior authority, is perfectly clear. 

As regards the great counties as, e.g.^ Champagne, Tou- 
louse, Anjou, the derivation of power may generally be traced 
to some more or less well-defined grant from 

^?l^^'S^^*'°^ above, and the use of the word " count " was a 
of the Two. ' 

reminder of the Carolingian institution. But, in 
the course of our period, this distinction had to all intents 
and purposes disappeared. The great counts were precisely 
the same in all respects as the dukes. They often changed 
their title for the more high-sounding one, but in many 
other cases the name " count " was retained without any 
sense of inferiority. The only permanent distinction was 
that a duke was always a high personality; a count might 
be one of the very highest or one of the lowest members in 
the feudal scale. 

The group of great territorial lords formed in every con- 
tinental country during the feudal period the real centres of 
_ power. They exercised in their fullest extent 

Territorial the regalian rights, i.e.., the military, the high 

°^ ^' judicial, and the financial. They guarded jeal- 

ously the integrity of their territory by insisting upon its 
inheritance through one male heir, especially by the princi- 
ple of primogeniture, and by associating the heir presump- 
tive with the head of the house during his life. They were 
the most active defenders of the seigniorial rights we have 
enumerated and the most clever and unscrupulous in taking 
advantage of all the numerous opportunities of aggrandize- 
jjj,, . ment at the expense of their inferiors. They 

France and spared no occasion for putting on a splendor of 

ermany. ceremonial equal to that of the king, as, for 
instance, in their coronation and consecration. In general 
we may say that the tendency was in France to concentrate 



498 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS, 

power in these few hands and thus to prepare the way for 
the further concentration in the royal hand ; in Germany to 
let the great nobility get so much power, and no more, as 
was consistent with the rights of an ever-increasing mass of 
lower nobility which served as a constant defense against a 
too active monarchy. 

The great feudatory was surrounded, like the king, 
by all the machinery of a complicated administration. 

The Sei°-iiio- ^^ ^^^ '^^^ private circle of officials, usually 
rial Adminis- four in number, the steward, the chamber- 
lain, the cup-bearer, and the marshal or 
constable, plainly the outgrowth of menial servants, ele- 
vated, by the very familiarity of their service, into a close 
intimacy with the master.' A fifth great office, that of chan- 
cellor, was usually held by a clergyman, who often became 
the representative of the suzerain for all business purposes. 
The power of the lord was enforced in the various parts of 
his dominion by local officials under various names, pro- 
vosts, bailiffs, vicars or what not. The effort of such officials 
was- constantly to make themselves independent of the 
suzerain, while his interest was to prevent them from be- 
coming hereditary holders of their functions. 

The revenues of the lord were also, like those of the king, 
extremely uncertain, depending first upon the product of 
his domain or private estate and then upon the 
eignioria feudal incidents above noted. Money was coined 
by all seigniors who had the regalian rights, and 
there was no practical limit to the opportunity of making 
profit by false coinage and by sudden changes of value. 
A common standard did not exist ; but certain coinages in 
one and another country came to be regarded with favor as 
of especial fineness and steadiness. Of course financial 
operations of any kind were impracticable under these cir- 
cumstances, aind it is only when the Italian cities came to 



FEUDAL CONTROL OF CHURCH. 499 

realize and to illustrate the value of credit and exchange 

that any advance in European commerce or any regularity 

in the public finances became possible. 

The rights of the great nobility over the churches in their 

territory were markedly different in Germany and in France. 

^ , . ^. We recall the compromise of Henry I of Ger- 
Ecclesiasti- ^ / 

cal Rights of many with Arnulf of Bavaria, by which the latter 
the Crown. secured to himself the right to appoint the 
Bavarian bishops. This privilege, however, was not main- 
tained by the German princes. It early became 
In Germany. , - r ^ i i • i • 

the prerogative of the crown, and this explains 

why the brunt of the Investiture conflict fell upon the 
German king. His right to appoint bishops and abbots 
throughout the kingdom was, until the time of Hildebrand, 
practically unquestioned, and even long after the 
Concordat of Worms we find him reasserting it 
whenever he saw his chance. What the king lost in this 
respect was gained, not by the great lords, but by the 
papacy 

In France, down to the Hildebrandine reforms, the 
appointment of the higher clergy was one of the most 
In F an frequent privileges of the seigniorial class. The 

before religious houses, episcopal or monastic, within a 

Gregory . gj-gg^^ feudal territory were directly subject to its 
lord. Their property was bound to pay its due revenue for 
his support, and their subjects were liable to military duty 
at his call. The great ecclesiastical places, bishoprics and 
abbacies, were given by him to trusty partisans or, even, — to 
such an extent had the seigniorial claims advanced, — were not 
infrequently taken by the lord himself. Such usurpation of 
bishoprics by laymen, never very common, soon gave way to 
the less shocking, but equally profitable, custom of educating 
a younger son for the church and putting him into the 
family bishopric. The feeling of restraint was less strong 



500 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

in regard to monasteries, and it was nothing unusual in 
France to find a lay lord regularly acting as abbot of several 
monasteries at once, without even a pretense of sharing in 
any way the clerical character. Such holders (defejisores ; 
abbates laid, milites, saeculares, irreligiosi^ frequently deputed 
the actual administration of the religious affairs to a dean 
(decanus or abbas legitijjms, monastictis, regularis), they them- 
selves retaining control over all the military and financial 
obligations of the foundation. 

It w^as against this secularization of religious institutions 
that the great reform of Cluny was directed. So long as the 

■^xx ^ X ^1. reformino^ party fought with exhortations alone, its 
Effect of tlie & r / ^ •> 

Gregorian success was but moderate. When it had gained 
Reforms. ^^ -^^ ^-j^ ^|^g gx^2X influence of the Hilde- 

brandine papacy, its progress was more rapid. It succeeded 
in breaking up the lay-investiture of bishops, at least so far 
as this concerned the spiritual functions ; in enforcing the 
canonical election, and in freeing the bishop from the oath 
of homage to the lord. The gain to the monastic clergy, 
though less complete, was yet considerable. The lay-abbacy 
either entirely disappears or covers itself with some decent 
show of legitimacy. A quickened conscience in religious 
matters really influences more or less the relation of the 
great barons to the clerical foundations within their limits. 
The great provincial lords, aiming to concentrate all 
power in their own hands, were able to do this only by 
means of the feudal process, i.e., they gained 
N^vrr^^^ power by seeming to part with it. To secure 
their military following they granted great parts 
of their landed property, together with many of the seignio- 
rial rights, to a variety of lesser nobles. Of 

T^^, „ these, the type is the French castellanus ; not 

Castellanus. ^ j r 

the mere keeper of a castle, as the name later 
implied, but the free holder of a fortified place together with 



THE LESSER NOBILITY. 501 

a considerable extent of territory and a greater or less 
proportion of the seigniorial or regalian rights. Such a 
fortress might be in a city or at a point of vantage in an 
open country. The holder is the typical feudal gentleman, 
noble by virtue of his hereditary land-holding and his mili- 
tary profession, aiming always to enlarge the circle of his 
lands and his prerogatives. In doing this he was constantly 
tempted to encroach upon the rights of those still below him, 
and to stretch his claims as regarded those above him. 
These struggles are the source of the chief movements 
within mediaeval society. The castellanus is probably a direct 
development from an official appointed by the Carolingian 
count to take charge of a district under his superior control. 
The same origin is probably to be assigned to the 
"viscount" iyicecomes), whose function, originally in fact, 
and always in theory, a deputed or representative 
v CO nt *^^^' t>ecame, by means of the feudal process, as 
independent as any other. The holder was not 
z//r^-anybody, but was a noble by the usual definition, and 
took his title from the land he held by the usual feudal 
hereditary tenure. 

A precisely similar character is that of two other feudal 
officials who represent the two kinds of clerical land- 
holders. The agent of the bishop in temporal 
domin T" matters is the vicedomi?ius (vidajne), that of the 
monastery is the advocatus (avozte, Vogt). The 
vidaj?ie was originally a clergyman, selected from the chapter 
to represent the bishop in business matters, and even taking 
his place if need were. As the temporal interests of the 
bishopric widened, it became important that they should 
be in the hands of some one who could uphold them in the 
fashion of the time. The bishop then gave them in charge 
to a layman and paid him in the feudal way by making him 
lord of a piece of land, which, of course, became hereditary 



502 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

in the family of the vidame, and thus gave him, if he did 
not already have it, the noble character. 

The advocatus was, as his name implied, " one called in " 
to do for the monastery what no member of the house could 
do for it — to collect its revenues, fight its battles 
^yf and preside over its temporal courts. He, too, 

got his pay out of the monastery property, and so 
tempting was the chance for pickings and stealings that we 
find the very highest lords exercising the advocateship, and 
for as many monasteries as possible. Generally, however, 
the advocate was a petty noble, who lived by the profits of 
his office and got on in the world by plucking the unpro- 
tected monks committed to his care. A great monastery 
might have as many advocati as it had domains large enough 
to pay for their service. Probably no form of oppression 
was more burdensome to the mediaeval monastery than 
precisely this, and the fact that the monastic institutions 
grew constantly richer and more powerful, only shows the 
immense margin of profit with which its business was 
carried on. 

Many other forms of the lower feudal officials might be 
enumerated, but these suffice to show the leading types 
under which all would fall.. If now we take this vast group 
of petty seigniories together, and set them over against the 
great provincial lords, we see clearly the elements of the 
feudal struggle, and can discern how, gradually, the powers 
of resistance of the feebler must have worn themselves out 
and made it comparatively easy for the stronger to consoli- 
date their force. Above both parties struggled and schemed 
the royal power opposing of conforming as it might, and 
coming, in the different countries, to the results we have 
above considered. 

From our modern point of view feudalism, even in its 
best regulated form, must appear to be little more than an 



FORCES HOSTILE TO FEUDALISM. 503 

organized anarchy. It recognized a principle, that of self- 
help, which must inevitably destroy it, and it is through a 
_, gradual gaining upon this destructive principle 

Hostile to that feudalism emerges into the system of mod- 
eu ism. ^^^ European statehood. In this process three 
agencies were especially active and effectual — one the 
growth of a monarchical power as in England and France, 
another the development of strong territorial lordships, 
either about local family interests as in Germany or about 
cities as in Italy, and a third the strengthening of a sense 
of public security on religious grounds, as shown in all 
countries by the efforts of the church to put a stop to 
private warfare. The first two of these agencies may 

too;ether be described as aiminp; to brino: about 
" Land- * , . 

frieden " and the " Landfrieden," i.e.^ the public peace on a 

"Gottes- basis of physical authority sufficient to support 
frieden." . . 

it. The third represents the working of the 

" Gottesfrieden," or the public peace on the basis of an 
agreement among those most inclined to violate it, the 
motive to such an agreement being a moral or religious one, 
and quite independent of any action of the governing 
powers. The wider politics of the Middle Ages were 
largely determined by the working of these opposing tend- 
encies, on the one hand to maintain and carry still further 
the feudal organization of anarchy; on the other, to over- 
come this and to put m its place compact and well- 
recognized executive powers standing in immediate relation 
to every subject. 

The feudal king seems at first sight to be the least 
effectual of sovereigns, and in fact he was, quite as much as 

emperor or pope, a political theory rather than 
Fe dal K' e- ^ political force. At the height of the system, 

say during the twelfth century, a king was only 
primus inte7- pares and, in actual command of resources, was 



504 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

often far inferior to many a vassal. Allegiance to him was 
not essentially different from that which was due to any 
other feudal suzerain. His control over his after-vassals 
was no more effective than that of any other great prince 
over his. In theory his rights were preserved whenever a 
feudal obligation was entered into by any of his subordi- 
nates, but in practice the enforcement of these rights was 
dependent upon the good-will of the very class by whom 
they were endangered. 

As a rule, the only resources of the feudal king were the 
revenues of his own private property and the allegiance of 
Development ^^^^^^ ^^^ \\^\^ directly of him fiefs which were 
of the not of political importance. In other words, his 

onarc y. yo^'A character did not increase his actual power. 
The great feudatories, bound to him by the nearest and most 
solemn ties, were precisely those upon whom he could least 
count. Hence, more than any other suzerain, the king was 
tempted to undermine the control of the great lords over 
their vassals and to draw the allegiance of these latter to 
himself. We find here the most striking illustrations of the 
difference in the political development of France and of 
Germany. Down to the close of the tenth century there is 
little distinction between the course of affairs in the two 
countries. In each we find a great territorial nobility 
settling itself into well-defined boundary-lines and setting 
up one after another a series of kings from different lead- 
ing houses. Between these kings and the great territorial 
lords there is a continual friction, caused by the gradual 
strengthening of the feudal arrangements on the one side 
and the effort to maintain earlier royal traditions on the 
other. From the accession of Hugh Capet divergent ten- 
dencies make themselves felt. In France the 
In France. 

monarchy remains henceforth in the hands of 

one family centred in one territory and carrying on from 



THE FEUDAL MONARCHY. 505 

generation to generation a fairly continuous policy. In 
Germany the monarchy never has a territorial basis and 
never reinains long in the hands of any one house. 

The more strict development of the feudal system in 

France carries the monarchy along with it as the necessary 

summit of the whole structure. The right of 



„ ^ the lord over his vassal seemed in some way to 
Monarcliy ■' 

identified be confirmed and strengthened by the formal 

3r^^? ,. acknowledgement of the supreme risrht of the 

Feudalism. ^ . . 

king and the danger of a too strict execution 
of this royal right was not imminent. Thus, carried alon-;];" 
by a set of institutions in reality hostile to it, the French 
monarchy advances by taking advantage of all the numerous 
opportunities offered by these institutions to break the force 
of all ties except those which bind men to itself. It accepts 
frankly the anomalous position of a feudal monarchy, but 
seeks to make the feudal relation profitable to itself. 

The same effort to strengthen the monarchy goes on in 
Germany, but by a different process. There the mere feudal 

character of the kingdom is never quite so clear. 

The German king never quite lost the character 
of the ancient Heerfiihrer, whose function was primarily 
military and only in a subordinate sense political. Thus, 
while he was from the beginning recognized as head of 
what state there was, he could seldom enforce his authority 
excepting at the sword's point. No single family ever held 
the power long enough to carry out any traditional policy 

of aggrandizement, and every attempt to do so 

Monarchy was met by one or another combination of local 

opposed to interests. The possession of the imperial title 
Feudalism. , , ^ • ^ ^' • , , ,^ r^ 

seemed to add an especial dignity to the German 

king ; but it is plain that the basis of the imperial theory 

was directly opposed to all feudal notions. Here was a 

divine right quite independent of personal contract, and its 



506 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

identification with the German monarchy called out naturally- 
all those forms of individual resistance which were a 
part of the very essence of feudalism. The real monarchy 
in Germany stopped short of the nominal kingdom and 
entrenched itself in the numerous local centres, whose con- 
flicts with the central power we have been studying. By 
the middle of the thirteenth century it had become a 
settled thing that Germany was to be a group of petty 
monarchies, held together not so much by common sub- 
jection to a nominal emperor as by a federative sense 
of mutual advantage and by an ever-increasing feeling of 
common nationality. 

In Italy, also, the feudal principle had never come to a 
harmonious and complete development. After all, the fun- 
damental instincts of the Italian people were 

J? \^^ rather Roman than German. The prevalence 
Monarchy. ^ 

of municipal and industrial over rural and agri- 
cultural life gave a turn to Italian politics which, while 
unfavorable to monarchical, was even more so to feudal 
ideas. The eager and jealous city populations were utterly 
unsuited to any regulation of their dealings with each other 
or with their subject territories by terms of mutual compact. 
They proposed to own their lands and to acknowledge no 

superior but an emperor, whose claims, the 
overcome by moment these became too pressing, they trusted 
^ -^ ^* to be able to dispose of without disadvantage. 
The history of the Lombard communes for a hundred years 
before 1183 is the sufficient illustration of how well this 
great democratic policy was carried out. The result was 
that in Italy as in Germany the feudal period in passing 
away left a group of territories to divide among them the 
sovereignty of the peninsula. Only that in Italy even the 
very slender ties of a common subjection to the emperor 
and a sense of federative union for mutual advantage were 



CONSERVATIVE FORCES. 507 

henceforth entirely wanting. The only tie binding Italians 

to each other was a growing consciousness of national unity, 

and even this was to require more than six hundred years 

after the close of our period to convert it into a lasting 

political bond. 

It is a source of continual wonder that a society so loosely 

constructed could have held together at all. Its centrifugal 

forces seem vastly superior to the forces of 
Conservative •' ^ 

Forces of cohesion. One of its saving elements, the 
Feudalism. balancing of rights and duties, we have already 
noticed. Another was a keen sense of personal honor. 
The word '' chivalry," originally denoting the superior form 
of military service rendered by the gentleman, came with 
time to include all the other attributes which that word 
connotes. The personality of the feudal relation tended to 
emphasize the idea of personal honor. Fealty to an indi- 
vidual served, under mediaeval conditions, to 
^^' call out all that sentiment of loyalty which in a 
more highly organized society may gather about the more 
abstract idea of the nation. Chivalry, with its singular 
combinations of brutal violence and inviolate honor, of 
passionate resentment and tenderness for the weak, of reck- 
less daring and religious humility, is the natural outcome 
of feudalism. It rises with it, takes an immense impulse 
during the period of the crusades, and then gives way with 
it before the assault of the modern spirit. The two most 
striking elements of chivalry are this keen sense of personal 
honor and a regard for woman so extreme and fantastic in 
its later forms that one feels sure that there must have been 
a very substantial basis of real sentiment beneath. Probably 
the perfect knight was as rare a creature as the perfect 
gentleman in this or in any age, but such an ideal was, 
doubtless, a strong conservative agency of the kind which, 
after all, is the saving thing in any social order. The 



508 THE FEUDAL INSTITUTIONS. 

conception of woman, in the abstract, as a sacred trust in the 
midst of a society built upon the idea of violence as its very- 
foundation-stone, must have gone far to redeem that society 
from barbarism. 

Another restraining force was the deep religiousness of 
the mediaeval character. The knight, border ruffian, wild 
marauder, plunderer of churches though he might 
Religious be, was still, underneath all, a religious man, — 
ense. ^|^.^^ -^^ 1^^ ^^^^ liable to sudden gusts of passion- 

ate self-accusation, for which religion alone could console. 
We have abundant illustration that many a man who might 
easily have broken through all the restraints of constitutional 
forms was held down to a life of comparative decency by a 
sense, however fitful in its expression, of religious obligation. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE MIDDLE AND 
LOWER CLASSES. 

LITERATURE. 

Many of the works cited under previous chapters contain information 

about city-organization. 
For Italy see Literature under chap. ix. 
Hegel, K. Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien, with an 

appendix on the cities of Germany. 2 vols. 1847. 
Stadte und Gilden der germanischen Volker im Mittelalter. 

2 vols. 1891. 
Kallsen, O. Die deutschen Stadte im Mittelalter. i. 1891. Esp. 

chapter on Hohenstaufenzeit. 
Maurer, G. L. Geschichte der Stadteverfassung in Deutschland. 4 

vols. 1873. 
Gierke, O. Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. 3 vols. 1881. An 

elaborate study of the principle of free association. 
SoHM, R. Die Entstehung des deutschen Stadtewesens. 1890. 
Von Below, G. Der Ursprungder deutschen Stadtverfassung. 1892. 
LucHAiRE, A. Manuel des Institutions Fran9aises. 1892. 
Les Communes Fran9aises a I'Epoque des Capetiens directs. 

1890. 
Thierry, Aug. Letters sur I'Histoire de France. Nos. xiii-xxiv. 

Monuments inedits du Tiers Etat. vol. i. 

Giry, a. Documents sur les relations de la royaute avec les villes en 

France. 1180-1314. 1885. 
Flach, J. Les origines de I'ancienne France, vol. ii. 1893. 

In studying the history of the Lombard communes in 
their great political development in the twelfth century, we 
have seen something of an aspect of mediaeval life quite 
apart from the prevailing feudal institutions. The communes, 



510 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

whether of Italy or of France, are an outgrowth of elements 

in society which were, by their very nature, excluded from 

the feudal compact. As we watch feudalism 
Importance , . . ., . . . , , ,. 

of tiie working out its peculiar views of social obliga- 

Laboring: ^ion and drawing into its complicated net-work 
all the dominant classes of the European popula- 
tion, we are apt to overlook the homely fact that all this 
great upper stratum of the social order had to be fed and 
clothed by the ignoble labor of an immensely larger body 
of servile or free workers. During the earlier part of our 
period these lower laboring and trading classes 
r'^r^^d ^^^ hardly mentioned in the records of the time, 
excepting where they are enumerated as so many 
pieces of property in the inventories of great estates. They 
have few or no rights, only obligations. They do not count 
among the factors of political, military or social movements. 
Those of them who live an agricultural life continue, during 
the whole middle period, in this dependent and insignificant 
position. Those w^ho gather into cities, originally quite as 
little equipped with the weapons of citizenship, come gradu- 
ally to a sense of their right to exist politically and they 
enforce this right by what now seems to us the most natural 
process in the world, by joining hands in a common effort. 
At first despised and neglected by the feudal organization, 
they gradually command its respect and finally come to 
terms with it, or even, in some cases, enter into it in their 
corporate capacity. 

In a former chapter we considered the various component 
parts of the feudal machinery, and showed how it developed 
the agencies of its own destruction and finally played into 
the hands of the very powers which had all along been 
hostile to it. We now come to deal with the great popular 
institutions and their final embodiment in political forms. 
The starting-point must be the distinction between noble 



THEIR IMPORTANCE. 511 

and ignoble service. We have already negatively defined 
the latter in defining the former. As noble service was 
that of the person in arms and on horseback, 
NoWe and so ignoble service was every other form of 
Service. return for the protection afforded by the lord of 

the land. And as, primarily, noble service was 
that of the unpaid soldier, so primarily, ignoble service was 
that of the laborer in the soil. In both cases there came to 
be great variations upon this primary notion. Feudal life 
was mainly agricultural, and hence the field laborer becomes 
the typical person of the lower orders, as the man in armor 
and on horseback is typical of the higher. The artisan is 
proportionately of as much less consequence^ as the arts of 
living were less perfectly cultivated than those occupations 
by which life was merely sustained. 

The Germanic invasion, while it was, probably, far less 
destructive to city-life than has been supposed, did unques- 
tionably tend to give an increased relative 
Importance of importance to the cultivation of the soil. The 

Agricultural newcomers were not ready to demand the 
Labor. . . T . , 

refinements of mdustrial production, indifferent 

to this as to every other form of art. The new societies 

of France, Germany and Italy were primarily interested in 

gaining and developing landed property, and made of it the 

basis of social distinction on the one hand and social 

ignominy on the other. The lord who owned the land and 

the serf who tilled it stand at the two extremities of the 

social and political scale. 

Of actual slavery we have here little need to speak. It 

had come down from both Roman and ancient German 

times, diminishing in extent and severitv durins: 

Slavery. ,_,.,.. , ■' ° 

the Frankish period, recognized in the Caro- 

lingian, but from the ninth century on so generally con- 
demned that it had henceforth only a sporadic existence. 



512 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

In the sense we now give to the word it meant a person 
absolutely the property of the master, who might deal with 
him as with any other property. The nearest approach to 
this form of slavery common in the Middle Ages was unfree 
domestic service, where the master's rights were so little 
checked that practically the serf was hardly better off than 
the slave. The principal form of actual slavery was that 
resulting from capture in war, especially when the captive 
was of foreign blood. The influence of a gradual soften- 
ing of manners, and an adoption, at least in theory, 
of Christian standards, undoubtedly brought about this 
advance in consideration for human life and human 
rights. 

The serf, of whatever condition, is known generally as 

serviis, anciHa, hotjio or feinina de corpore. The group of 

, serfs belonging to an estate is called the fa7nilia. 

S13.V6S 

gradually The element of servitude consists in the fact 
merged into that while the serf cannot be sold he cannot, on 
the other hand, leave the estate to which he 
belongs. He is fixed to the soil and passes with it from 
one to another owner. Yet he is not one of a herd of 
laborers, driven to his daily toil by an overseer. He lives 
upon a specified bit of land, and pays for this an annual rent 
{census) to the lord. This rent, though estimated in money, 
was usually paid in the form of a large percentage of the 
crop, and what remained over was nominally the property 
of the serf. The form of agriculture, it will be remembered, 
was regularly what we should call " small farming," a 
method suited to the conditions of a scanty population and 
a limited demand. If the serf deserted his land, he might 
be brought back by force, or, if he could not be found, the 
land reverted to the owner. The right of inheritance, even 
by collaterals, gradually made its way here as in all other 
relations of life. 



THE SERVILE POPULATION. 513 

As the serf, man or woman, formed a valuable part of the 
estate, it was the owner's interest to keep him or her in 
.. good working order, and prevent any diminution 

Marriage or loss of service. Next to escape, the chief 
"" ^ * source of loss was by one or another incident of 

marriage. In the earliest times no regular marriage of serfs 
was recognized, and their children could hence claim no 
rights of legitimacy. Thanks to the church, here as so 
often elsewhere a democratic institution, such marriage 
became legal from the middle of the twelfth century, and 
we have to'" connect this fact with the right of inheritance 
of servile lands. Very curious complications arose when 
the serf of one lord married the serf of another. Plainly, 
if the woman lived with her husband her service was lost to 
her lord, and if her children also went with her, the loss 
was still greater. We find a great variety of solutions of 
these difficulties. Sometimes the injured lord seeks money 
compensation from the other, or he waits until a future 
marriage in the opposite direction shall restore the balance. 
Usually the children are divided between the two estates 
according to some system agreed upon. 

The serf was, ordinarily, incapable of judicial service, 
either as judge or witness. This incapacity was the result 
Incapacity °^ ^^^ inability to fight, since only the man of 
before the arms was regarded as capable of interpreting the 

will of God as manifested in judicial decisions. 
Naturally the serf was excluded from the judicial combat. 

The chief source of oppression of the servile class, the 
cause of their frequent outbreaks, and in this way often the 

means of their escape from servitude, was the 
Taxatipiu^ burden of taxation, both regular and occasional, 

under which they lived. This above all else was 
the brand of the servile condition. The regular tax was an 
annual levy per head {capitagiwn, capitale, census capitis)^ 



514 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

and the person thus conditioned was called hoino de capite., 
or capitalis. In France the ordinary poll-tax was four 
deniers. We have little account of any discontent with such 
regular and moderate impositions ; but far otherwise with 
the arbitrary right of the taille. In its extreme form this 
gave to the owner the right to demand money of the serf 
whenever he chose, and we have some indications that it 
was originally so understood ; but of course in this sense it 
simply annihilated all right of the serf to the free disposition 
of his savings, and thus led by its very extravagance to fixed 
limitations. From stage to stage the impositions become 
less rigorous and more regular, and thus, on the whole, the 
condition of the servile peasantry grows more endurable. 
In this process of humane development the monarchy and 
the church were distinctly the leading agents. SerfdoQi on 

« r X xt. the roval and ecclesiastical estates was reo^ularly 
Serfs of the ^ .... 

King: and the a milder and less arbitrary institution than else- 
Church, where. Setting aside the motives of religion, 
honor, and a sense of abstract justice, which, undoubtedly, 
had their share in this distinction, we find it explained by 
the advantage which came to any authority intelligent and 
steady enough in its policy to see the value of keeping a 
large and contented body of laborers on its land. The 
gradual improvement of the servile class and its advance 
towards personal freedom were due in great measure to 
efforts on the part of the serfs themselves to improve their 
condition by moving from one master to another. Such 
motion was, indeed, forbidden by the servile condition, but 
a means of evading pursuit by force was always to be found, 
and lords of every description eventually found it profitable 
to make their service attractive by removing obnoxious con- 
ditions from their servile holdings. 

Thus, with time, several processes came to be recognized, 
by which the serf could leave his master, either to enter the 



THE SERVILE POPULATION. 515 

service of another or to claim entire liberty. If he chose to 

renounce all claim to the movable property in his posses- 

. sion he might, upon due notice given, disavow 
Processes of t. ' r o ' 

Emancipa- his bond and wander forth at will. To prevent 
*^°"' loss from such migration we find groups of lords 

agreeing, either to return all such migratory serfs or, on the 
other hand, to allow free settlement to their mutual advan- 
tage. The escape from serfdom into entire or partial free- 
dom was possible in various ways. An escaped serf, claim- 
ing in a new community to be a free man, came with time 
more and more to have the priiiia facie proof on his side. 
If he could make his way by any process into the church or 
into free military service, or become a member of a free city 
community, he became by that fact a free man. Sometimes 
a serf might acquire an inferior official function which 
carried with it the free condition. Besides these more or 
less underhand methods there were well-recognized forms of 
manumission, the consideration of which leads, naturally, to 
a notice of the various classes of non-noble freemen. 

The distinction between the mediaeval serf and the non- 
noble freeman was analogous to that between the holder of 
a fief and the owner of land in fee-simple. In 

e ommon j-^q^j^ cases the difference was to a great extent 
Freeman. * 

one of sentiment. The allodial holding was more 
independent, but in practice the feudal bond was preferred. 
So when the serf became a freeman, he was personally more 
independent in his motions, but he was subject to almost the 
same exactions as before, and was deprived of the protection 
which the master's interest naturally gave to the serf who 
was his property. In the case of land tenure, however, the 
drift was steadily away from the freer position towards the 
more limited ; in the case of serfdom it was as steadily the 
other way. The same causes which led enlightened masters, 
such as the king and the church generally were, to lighten 



516 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

the burdens of their serfs, tended also to make them wilHng, 

mider favorable conditions, to emancipate them. Sentiment 

aside, the prevailing motive with the lord was 

for Money.^^^ ^^^'^ "^^^ °^ money, a need growing more 
immediate and pressing as the middle period 
advanced. Doubtless the crusading spirit in all its forms 
tended to help along this process. The lord, called upon 
for service, frequently found himself in urgent need of the 
wherewithal to provide his equipment. In emancipating a 
serf he received a money payment of considerable value and 
in all probability retained him on the land as a free peasant, 
losing only the annual poll-tax and one or two other dues 
which marked the servile condition, but retaining the right 
to the other contributions which may be thought of as rent, 
Ccmpuisorv ^"^ "*^^ '^^ indicating any bond of servitude. So 
Emancipa- far did this process go that we have instances of 
^°°' serfs emancipated against their will in order to 

raise promptly a fixed amount of cash for the master. By 
means of a not very costly liberality in this direction an 
estate was made attractive to the farming population, and 
the land might be developed very greatly to the owner's 
advantage. The risk of emancipation was, of course, the 
loss of the new freedman's service. He was at liberty to 
change his residence but, in fact, the temptation to do so 
was great only when he saw his way to improved conditions, 
and it was the lord's affair to see to it that this temptation 
did not become too strong. 

The numerous grants of manumission preserved show a 
constant fear on the part of the lords lest their lands be con- 
verted too rapidly or by ways unprofitable to 
Dangfer of r j j j sr 

too Rapid themselves into free lands. For example, the 

Emanci- freedman mio'ht not acquire, by inheritance, 
pation. , * , . . , 

purchase or otherwise, any part of the servile 

lands of his lord ; he was sometimes bound not to marry 



EMANCIPATION OF SERFS. 517 

a servile person belonging to another lord, because in that 
case his land would go to that lord and thus be lost to 
his master. 

The free peasant proprietor or vilJai?!., /.<?., inhabitant of a 
rural village, in distinction from the dweller in a city, was 

nominally bound only to pay to his lord an annual 
Villain rent, either in money or in kind, sometimes a 

fixed amount, sometimes a percentage of the 
product. Otherwise his control of his land was complete 
and he might dispose of it as he would. In fact, however, 
he was subject to a great variety of exactions which usually 
prevented him from acquiring property enough to lift him 
much above the merest necessities of life. Under any 
economic pressure it is the poor man who suffers, and it 
would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the Middle 
Ages were always under economic pressure. Every one 
lived from hand to mouth, and the mouth of the lord had 
to be filled by the hand of the peasant. Nor was it merely 
the direct lord who took it out of the tiller of the soil. The 
clergy, not as landholder but as a religious power, got its 
share and above the immediate master was the higher suze- 
rain, count, duke or king with his superior claim over a part 

of the peasant's hard-earned gains. The rights 

f^Z ^!^^ J of the lord over the free villain may be described 
of the Lord. -^ 

shortly as covering every form of claim which a 
very limited public opinion would sanction and which force 
could exact. They began with an annual tax on the land 
followed by another on the crops. Then came others upon 
the beasts of burden, upon sales and every form of commer- 
cial transaction, upon the circulation of persons and goods, 
upon inheritances, servile or free, and upon every act in the 
administration of justice. The lord had over the peasant 
many of the same rights we have noted in connection with 
feudalism, e.g.^ the right of entertainment for a fixed time 



SIS THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

and for a certain number of times a year, the right of seizing 
horses, wagons or any other necessities for a journey, even 
a right of unUmited credit for requisitions beyond the pro- 
visions of contract. 

Especially burdensome were the rights of corvee by which 

the free peasant as well as the serf must give a certain 

number of days' work in the year with beasts 

e orvee. ^^^ wagons for the repair of public roads or the 
cultivation of the lord's domain. He was in momentary 
danger of being called upon for such inferior sort of mili- 
tary service, both in the field and in the defense of castles, 
as his condition made possible; in default of such service, 
to pay a fine in money or in kind. Finally he 

Seignion ^^^ bound to bake his bread at the lord's oven. 
Monopolies. ' 

grind his grain at the lord's mill, and press his 
grapes in the lord's wine-press, paying, of course, for the 
privilege ; if he wanted to chase or cut wood in the 
forest, or fish in the stream, or feed his cattle in the 
pasture, all of which were reserved seigniorial rights, he 
must pay his tax. He must pay the lord for the use of 
his weights and measures, or for a guarantee against 
changes in his coinage. He may not even sell the rem- 
nant of crops which survived this accumulation of taxes 
until those of the lord have been sold at the highest 
market price. 

After the lord had squeezed the peasant almost to the 
point of extinction, came the church with its even more 
effectual agencies of terror and superstition. Its 
Uerical principal exaction was the tithe, a tax of one- 

tenth upon the products of agriculture, a burden 
sufficient, if rigidly exacted, to ruin any field industry. But 
not content with this, the church, like the feudal seignior, 
profited by every special occasion, birth, baptism, marriage, 
death, to collect new contributions. 



TtiE FREE PEASANTRY. 519 

Last of all came the suzerain-in-chief, with his supreme 
rights of military service, of entertainment, and of extraor- 
dinary taxation, and took what the peasant 

Exactions of |^^^ j^^^^ q^^ g^^^ ^ easily that under such 
the Suzerain. ^ •' 

conditions as these the free peasantry must 

needs have sunk to the lowest possible stage of effective- 
ness. Agriculture, burdened in this way, must necessarily 
have become unremunerative, and we comprehend, as one 
could not do without this survey, how it was that, on the one 
hand, men of ambition and character sought to withdraw 
themselves from its dangers and uncertainties and betook 
themselves to the greater security and more regular earnings 
of a city life, while others were ready to give up the struggle 
and fall back into the comparative security of actual serfdom. 
We have thus far dwelt chiefly upon that large class of 
the working population which was engaged in agriculture. 
Other forms of manual labor were subject to 
Industrial similar restrictions, but by their very nature, 

opu a ion. ]3ging independent of the land, they opened up to 
those who followed them a better opportunity to change 
their condition and, above all things, to tmite for the 
advancement of their class interests. The development of 
the industrial and trading classes will, therefore, furnish us 
with the best thread of connection between the mass of 
isolated and defenseless laborers in the country and the 
thoroughly organized and politically powerful corporations] 
of the free cities. Politically speaking, the common laborer, 
servile or free, had no existence. The most he could gain, 
under the most favorable conditions, was a tolerable living 
. , and the right to a small margin of the profit of 

Political his toil. He becomes an effective part of the 

ower. body social and political only when he combines 

with others of his kind and gains power to resist encroach- 
ment upon what he calls his rights. But it must be remem- 



520 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

bered that the basis of right on the side of the lord, as of 
the subject, was purely customary, and that the custom was 
frequently fixed only by the repetition of an act of aggres- 
sion on one side, or of successful resistance on the other. 

If we go back to the beginnings of our period, we find 
the artisans, generally servile, grouped together under the 

eye of a seignior to whom the product of their 
Seigniorial labor belongs and who is bound by custom to 
Labor. allow them such portion of the profit as is 

necessary to keep them alive and productive. 
They are, like the field serf, raised but one stage above the 
true slave. Gradually they emerge from this condition, 
partly by means of emancipation, but chiefiy by forming 
themselves into communities, very little organized at first, 
but still able to deal with the seignior as one power with 
another. Step by step these organizations become more 
complete until the process culminates in the great free city, 
which enters into the highest class of political elements on 

an equality. The early stages of this develop- 

?*'"^'^. . ment are obscure. They have seemed to some 
Organization. -' 

scholars to be a continuation of late Roman 
corporate institutions and perhaps, for some parts of France, 
this theory may work. In general, however, it will probably 
be safer, in the absence of sufiicient documents, to connect 
the beginnings of inediaeval corporate movements with the 
actual and practical economic conditions of the time. The 
free artisan separates himself from the familia of the 
seignior, and gains the right to the product of his labor, 
subject, of course, to such impositions as every mediaeval 
person, individual or corporate, must recognize. He enters, 
for the better preservation of his rights, into a community, 
village or city, which makes terms with the lord of the land. 
The pressure of the seigniorial rights then falls upon the 
community, not upon the individual. 



ARTISANS AND TRADERS. 521 

The little corporation thu^-^tablished becomes the type 

of all such unions, even up to the great city organizations of 

the twelfth and succeeding centuries. It con- 

, . ^. sisted of all those who within certain limits 

of Artisans. 

exercised the trades {cwtes) common to the time. 
Its members fell into sharply-defined grades: (i) the appren- 
tice, bound by contract to a master, for a definite term of 
years, during which he received his living and his instruction 
and paid, besides a money-fee, such work as he could do ; 

(2) the journeyman or skilled laborer working on wages ; 

(3) the master, who had given sufficient and formal evidence 
of his capacity as a workman and his credit as a man. The 
government of the corporation {communitas, universitas, gildct) 
is in the hands of sworn elective officers, two or more in 
number (^jiirati^ ho7m?ies prudentes) who have general over- 
sight of the enforcement of the statutes. The relations of 
the guild to the seignior were in the hands of a seigniorial (or 
royal) official (^prevot) whose business it was to maintain the 
side of the lord in the incessant and inevitable conflicts as 
to the limit of rights and privileges. Each guild had its own 
peculiar relations with the seigniorial treasury, but when, as 
was the case in the larger cities, the several guilds made 
common cause, the artisan class came forward into positive 
political action. They formed there the vast body of the lower 
order of citizens, having above them the class of merchants, 
wholesale dealers and money lenders, who formed the domi- 
nant city aristocracy. The internal history of the French 
and Italian cities during our period consists largely in the 
efforts of the great laboring democracy to work its way up 
to political equality with this controlling aristocratic ele- 
ment. At the close of our period this effort was generally 
successful. 

The development of cities in Italy was greatly furthered 
by the absence of any central authority, by the failure of 



522 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

feudalism to get as firm a hold upon the population as else- 
where and, resulting from this, the comparative weakness 
of all larger territorial powers as, for instance, 

Municipal the count of Tuscany. Probably, also, we 

Development 

in Italy. should give considerable weight to the Italian 

character, far more clever and better endowed 
artistically than that of any other European people. The 
artistic instinct turning itself first, as is its wont, to things 
of use, found its expression in the greater skill and capacity 
of the class of artisans. The same qualities of cleverness 
and adaptability showed themselves as soon as the artisans 
began to unite and especially when their union began to 
take on a political character. The result of this develop- 
ment on outward politics we have already seen ; our concern 
now is with the internal institutions by which the great 
political movements of the twelfth century were made 
possible. 

The history of the Italian communes may be studied in 
the following stages : (i) Under the Carolingian system the 
_ , city became in Italy the natural unit of adminis- 

Commnnal tration. It fell under the control of a count and 
rogress. most often this person was also the bishop. 
Under him, the city was administered by his officials with 
no more of a popular element in the government than was 
common to all Germanic administration. (2) From the 
eleventh century on, an organized popular movement is 
visible and becomes more and more of a force until it 
displaces the episcopal government and puts in its place 
a democracy with elective magistrates, and a strong aristo- 
cratic element. (3) From the thirteenth century we notice 
the rise to power within the democracies of this aristocracy 
based upon certain well-marked families. (4) From the 
fifteenth century some one among the great families in each 
community forces its way to leadership and produces a series 



THE GUILDS IN ORGANIZATION. 523 

of tyrants who carry on the business of the state until they 
finally bring it out (5) into the petty " legitimate " monarchy 
of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

Our concern is only with the second of these stages, and 
specifically with that form of municipal government known 

Classes of ^^ ^^ " ^^^^u^^^-" The part of Italy in which 
the Lombard the whole development can best be studied is 
Population. Lombardy, and there the typical city is Milan. 
The population of the Lombard town in the eleventh century 
was clearly divided into the industrial and trading element 
within the walls and the nobility of blood, living either 
within the city or on their estates in the neighborhood. 
This nobility was again divided into a higher, the capitanei, 
and a lower, the valvassores. Each of these three classes, 
citizens, higher nobility, and lower nobility, had come to be 
very conscious and very jealous of its rights. The nobles 
represent to us the feudal element, primarily agricultural 
and aristrocratic and inclined to look upward to some 
superior as the source of its powers. This superior had 
now come to be the emperor, and we have already traced 
the outward connection of the imperial policy with these 
local interests. 

The most striking incident of the Italian municipal devel- 
opment is the readiness with which the noble classes, after 
They unite ^ short resistance, found their interest in giving 
in the up their separatist tendencies ari,d cast in their 

ommunes. j^^ ^^^1^ their bourgeois neighbors, putting into 
the common cause their own larger equipment in wealth 
and political experience, and thus gaining their due share 
in the management of a development which they were 
powerless to check. When the Milanese consuls appear 
for the first time early in the twelfth century in public docu- 
ments as the administrative magistrates of the city they are 
plainly distinguished as members of the three orders. They 



524 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

form a new magistracy, having its constitutional basis in 

the choice of all classes, at first with a preponderance of 

influence on the side of the aristocratic element, but with 

a steady growth in the weight of the city democracy. The 

number of the consuls in Milan is at this time eighteen, 

but it was afterwards reduced to twelve and this number 

becomes the normal one throughout Lombardy, though 

still with great variations. 

The development in other cities of Lombardy and also 

of Tuscany and Romagna was, with minor local differences, 

quite similar to that in Milan, so that by 1200 
The . . 

Communes ^^ "^^.y safely say that the political future of 

permanently Italy was permanently secured to the democratic 
city governments. The continual warfare of 
papacy and empire contributed to strengthen the munici- 
palities as against any superior power whatever. As in 
Lombardy Milan, so in central Italy Florence, becomes 
the head and type of the communal organization. The 
hostility between the classes of the artisans or merchants 
and the nobility of blood continues and takes form under 
the names of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties, but more 
and more the actual distinctions here become obscured. 
There rises a new aristocracy of wealth and intelligence, 
a Guelf nobility, as bold in asserting rights and as violent 
in maintaining them as ever any nobility of birth had been. 
As we come to the questions of administration we see 
very marked differences between the French and the Italian 

communes. In France the separation of the 
The Commun- . . . ^ 

alAdminis- commune from a superior person or some sort, 

tration. count, bishop, duke or king, was never complete. 

In Italy there remained no one between the city 
and the shadowy supremacy of the emperor. The Italian 
commune, therefore, takes on, from an early date, the char- 
acter of an independent state. Its chief magistrates, the 



THE LOMBARD COMMUNES. SIS 

consuls, were supreme executive officers especially in matters 
of war and justice. They represent the commune in all 
dealings with other powers, as, for instance, in all the long 
negotiations before and during the Lombard League. They 
are elected for short terms and are paid out of the communal 
treasury. 

By the side of the consuls in their administrative capacity 
stand officials generally classed together as judices et sapi- 

entes. The judices were probably a body of 
Judices. . . 

persons correspondmg to that Germanic institu- 
tion out of which our jury was developed, ?>., a representation 
of the people to aid the judge in his interpretation of the 
common law. With time this function came to be a pro- 
fessional one, and we have everywhere a class of persons 
who have become learned in the law by means of practice 
in administering it. These are the scabini (schoffen, eche- 
vins) and such were probably the Italian judices. As 
learning advanced, as legal rights became more complicated, 
and especially as the Roman law came to be professionally 
studied, this class developed into a body of lawyers in our 
modern sense. The sapientes formed a far less accurately 

definable institution, a kind of irregular council 
Sapientes. i • i • • 

which might be summoned in an emergency. 

Below the consuls, judices and sapientes stood the pm-la- 

me?itum, a general assembly of all full citizens, not including, 

at first, the artisan class. The citizens were 
mentum ^" divided for administrative and military purposes 

into local wards, an arrangement strikingly 
indicating the theory of equality on which this constitution 
is based. 

This is the organization under which the Italian communes 
went into their long and bitter contest with Frederic Bar- 
barossa.^ How well it worked we have already seen. On 

1 See chap. ix. 



526 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

the whole, it met the strain of that momentous struggle with 

remarkable success. It suffered no permanent diminution 

in strength or eifectiveness, but it did undergo 

The • • 

Podesta. certam modifications. It will be remembered 

that the most troublesome question between 
the emperor and the communes was the appointment of 
magistrates. Whenever the emperor gained his point here 
he placed at the head of a city a single governor, called 
generally by the Italians podesta (^potestas), a word especially 
useful as having no connection with any inconvenient tradi- 
tion. Whether the cities learned in this way how much 
more effective a single executive might be than a divided 
one, is not clear ; at all events they begin from this time 
forth more and more to place the executive power in the 
hands of one man, and to call him podesta. This elective 
ofhce had at first an extraordinary character, something 
like that of the Roman dictatorship, but became gradually 
the rule. The podesta was regularly a stranger in the city, 
and of noble origin. He was elected by the citizens for a 
short term, a year or six months. His functions were civil 
and military at once, and his authority appears very much 
more extended than that of the ordinary feudal executive. 
The podesta was, however, limited by two councils of 
citizens, a smaller and a larger {cotisiglio speziale e generate 
The Greater del commune). Tho. parlamentum was retained 
and Lesser for cases of special importance. This is the 
ounci s. form of municipal constitution under which 
Italy passes through its astonishing social, intellectual and 
industrial expansion in the thirteenth and fourteenth cen- 
turies. But one element remains to be noticed here : the 
gradual transfer of the basis of all political power from the 
citizens as such to the trade and artisan guilds in their 
corporate capacity. The question of the origin of guilds, 
whether from ancient Roman models, from servile groups 



THE ITALIAN CITY ORGANIZATION. 527 

under the control of a feudal lord, or from free associa- 
tion, is one very much disputed. For our present purpose 

it is enousjh that the same spirit of association 
The ... , . . ,^ . , 

Guilds as which was showing itseli in the commune m gen- 

Poiitical eral was seen also, and earlier, in the formation 
Corporations. 

of these lesser unions. The guilds were already 

corporate units when the communal movement began, but 

they do not assume a political character until well within 

the thirteenth century. This is the best stroke in the 

democratic assault upon the remnants of the feudal 

nobility. It takes the form of a Guelf movement, but 

without reference to the antagonism of empire and papacy. 

The dramatic culmination is seen in the famous 
Ordinances of " Ordinances of Justice" in Florence in the year 
jns ice. 1294, a series of laws excluding the non-artisan, 

and non-trading classes from all share in public office and 
binding them to keep the peace by making the whole class 
of the nobility outside the guilds responsible for the acts of 
its individual members. Eleven years before the " priors " 
of the principal guilds had been declared the signoria, i.e., 
the responsible government of the city, and now at the head 
of this signoria was placed a new official, the gonfalo7iiere 
della gmsfizia, as the special executive of the new ordinances. 
The example of Florence was generally followed in the 
city republics of Tuscany. In the north, though such 
extreme measures were not taken, it is still true that the 
guilds became the actual basis of city organization. The 
one great exception is Venice, where, for reasons connected 
The " Grand P^^^^P^ with its peculiar history as a Roman 
Council" at community, largely exempt from Germanic, influ- 

ence, the aristocratic element always maintained 
the upper hand. There, too, a crisis was reached nearly at 
the same time as in Florence, but in the precisely opposite 
direction. The " Closing of the Grand Council " in the year 



528 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

1297 was the definite fixing of a list of aristocratic families 
in whose hands .alone the government of the republic was 
to rest. The story of the fourth crusade ^ is the best illus- 
tration of what this close aristocracy, skillfully handled, was 
able to accomplish. It had already made the state of 
Venice when it gave itself a constitution on the basis of 
the Grand Council. 

In studying the organization of the city communities in 
France we encounter a great variety of conditions, from that 

^ . . ^ of almost entire liberty down to that of a com- 
Origin of ^ 

tlie French plete subjection to a suzerain, with only such 
Communes, limitation as the fact of union in itself provided. 
In no case was a city without some superior to whom it 
owed certain well-defined duties, but this superior might be 
the king, the church, or a lay baron. The precise balance 
of rights and duties between the community and the seignior 
was laid down in the charter of the corporation and varied 
greatly with the circumstances under which the charter was 
obtained. It was formerly supposed that the granting of 
charters, which begins with the eleventh and goes on at a 
great pace in the twelfth century, was an act of grace on 
the part of the lords, especially of the king, but we have 
learned to place little or no weight on those fine phrases of 
the charters themselves, which emphasize this view, and to 
find more reasonable and more human causes for their 
creation than those there expressed. The fact is, that in a 
great majority of cases the corporation recognized by the 
charters was not called into being by them, but had long 
existed without definite rights or political weight. Like 
other mediaeval corporations, as for example the universities, 
the communal organization grew up at first by the simple 
and natural process of association for some definite pur- 
pose, and then, becoming conscious of its strength, sought 

1 See p. 379 ff. 



ORIGIN OF FRENCH COMMUNES. 529 

recognition by an act of incorporation from the highest 

political authority it could reach. 

The motives in granting city charters appear to have been 

substantially the same as those we have noticed in connec- 

^ ^. - tion with the ffrantiner of manumission from 
Granting of =* ^ 

Communal individual servitude. In no case was the con- 
ar ers. sideration of cash left out of sight. The 
charter, in spite of its lofty declarations of interest in the 
citizens of the ''good town," was bought and paid for. It 
was not only a means for providing money to meet some 
present need of the lord, but it was an attraction to all 
those floating elements of the population which then, as now, 
might be drawn into a city well provided with liberties and 
exemptions. The more attractive the city the better the 
chance that its dues would be promptly paid, its military 
service duly maintained, and its fortifications kept in proper 
trim to defend the lord's interest in time of war. The most 
prudent seigniors were the earliest to see the advantage of 
these concessions, but their example was rapidly followed 
by others as the advantage became evident. 

The communal charter was guaranteed by the oaths of 
the lord who gave it, of his officer in the city, of his 
immediate suzerain, and of the king or pro- 
the Charter ^^^^^^^ seignior — the theory being that any such 
grant was, in so far, a diminution of the feudal 
rights of every rank concerned. Each stage of consent to 
such diminution was naturally paid for by the commune which 
profited by it. The form of the charter varied infinitely in 
detail, but certain charters came to be taken as types to which 
others were made to conform, as for instance, that of the town 
of Lorris. In general the charter guaranteed the personal 
liberty of all the inhabitants, their right to marry, to change 
their residence, and to dispose of their property at will. 
The feudal property in the land remained with the seignior, 



530 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

The main purpose of the charter was to fix the claims of 
the lord upon the service of the inhabitants, and, in doing 
so, generally to limit them. The tendency was 
of Taxati^o^n ^ steadily to convert the great diversity of feudal 
obligations into regular and well-determined 
payments of money. We find here the earliest modern 
attempts to regulate taxation upon the theory that a good 
cax is one that falls at regular times, is not excessive, and 
does not vary greatly in amount, so that it can be antici- 
pated and provided for. Any intelligent community will 
prefer a considerably larger tax of this sort to a smaller one 
levied irregularly, and so we find the charters making a 
very considerable advance towards a sound view of public 
finance on both sides. 

The tendency of the clauses of the charters relating to 
judicial matters was to limit the arbitrary action of seignio- 
rial justice, partly by checking certain direct 
imitations fc)rms of its action, partly by opening up to the 
citizens means of settling their difficulties by 
their own tribunals. 

The military service of the chartered communes was 

regulated by restricting very much and very jealously the 

length of time for which service could be de- 

n^^A^^-^ manded, the distance from the walls to which 
Conditions. ' 

soldiers might be led, and the causes for which 
they might be summoned. The tendency here was plainly 
to place the cities among the great peace -preserving 
agencies of the time. They were willing to fight and 
proved their willingness on many a field, but they did not 
propose to waste their energies in the petty warfare of the 
barons, or to let themselves be carried off to remote parts 
of the country and for an indefinite length of time, to 
aid ambitious barons in objects with which they had no 
concern, 



FRENCH COMMUNAL CHARTERS. 531 

The terms of the charter applied to all those inhabitants 
who had complied with the conditions necessary to make 
Th p • - them citizens {bourgeois). These included a 
ilegedBody majority of the inhabitants, but not necessarily 
.0 ci izens. members of the nobility or clergy, unless they 
chose to avail themselves of the advantages of the bour- 
geoisie without strictly binding themselves to its burdens. 
Another exceptional class were the "king's citizens " 
{bourgeois du roi), either regularly enrolled as citizens of a 
royal city, though living elsewhere, or else citizens of any 
town, who had profited by the feudal privilege to "disavow" 
the seignior of that town and "avow" themselves to the 
king. It is very evident that, as the king's power extended 
everywhere towards the close of our period, these scattered 
subjects served as so many points of attachment for his 
advancing authority. 

The chartered towns stood, as regarded their administra- 
tive functions, executive and judicial, in very different 
Reiaf f I'sl^.tions to the seigniorial authority. In some 
theCityto we find a wide range of privileges in regard to 

e eignior. exemption from taxation in all its forms, but 
nothing that can be called a municipality in the sense of 
an independent executive system in the hands of freely 
elected magistrates. In such a city the executive power 
was exercised by an officer of the seignior, who was also 
charged with the administration of justice. In other cities 
we find a regularly elected magistracy for executive work, 
but as yet no judicial system except that of the seignor. In 
others, again, the seignior has parted with both these attri- 
butes of sovereignty, and the community may properly be 
compared with the actual free city, the chief distinction 
being that in the one case the liberties of the place have 
come from above by an act, more or less voluntary, of the 
seignior ; in the other they have generally been gained by a 



532 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

revolution from below. In the case of the chartered city, 
also, the relation with an immediate lord was not entirely 
severed, while the free city generally threw off the control 
of its former seignior and entered directly, as a corporate 
person, into the feudal hierarchy. 

The great free cities of France were divided into two 
principal classes, the comimmal of the north and the consu- 
lar of the south. Whatever difference of origin 
Free C'f "^^^ have led to this variation in form, the dis- 
tinction came, during our period, to be a merely 
formal one. Probably some influence of the Lombard 
movement or even a vague Roman tradition, common to 
both Italy and France, determined the consular organization 
in the south. Probably, also, the Germanic principle of the 
general assembly of freemen as the source of all action of 
the community, had its weight in fixing the communal form 
upon the municipalities of the north. However this may 
be as to their origin, the spirit of the two institutions was 
essentially the same. In the south as well as in the north 
we find groups of keen, intelligent citizens divided into 
their industrial and commercial organizations, already well 
practiced in the art of successful association and thoroughly 
conscious of what they wanted. 

The first step in the formation of the commune^ technically 

so called, in northern France, was the taking of the com- 

. ^. munal oath (sacramefitii7n commimiae) by a certain 
Organization ^ / ■' 

of the body of the free and well-to-do citizens, to whom 

Commune. ^gj-g then added such others as conformed to the 
required conditions. They must be freemen, of sound body 
and rich enough to meet the financial demands of the 
commune. The communal oath might also be taken by 
nobles or clergymen, who, however, did not thus become 
members of the corporation, but only bound themselves to 
respect its privileges. As regards the lord of the place, his 



FRENCH FREE CITIES. 533 

consent was sought in the form of a charter similar, in 
most respects, to that of the simple chartered city, but 
sometimes it was long before such a charter could be gained, 
and nothing better proves the force of these great associa- 
tions than the fact that meanwhile the commune entered 
into the practical exercise of all its rights and demanded a 
charter only when it came to feel the need of their con- 
firmation. It is only at the close of our period that we 
meet the legal maxim, " no commune without a charter," 
corresponding, in its purpose, with that other maxim in 
feudal affairs, " no land without a lord." Once gained, the 
charter became the foundation of all communal action and 
was guarded and presented for re-confirmation to succeed- 
ing suzerains with the greatest care. 

The history of the northern French communes is that of 
a bit of modern life in the midst of mediaeval and feudal 

TheCommtiiie ^"^^'^^^^^'^S^' ^^^ principle they represented, 
vs. the right of a commiunity to command the alle- 
eu a sm. gjg^j^(.g g^j^^^ ^^ service of all its members to the 
exclusion of all other authorities, is that of the modern 
state. It is absolutely opposed to the notion of privilege, 
i.e.^ private rights, which dominated the society in the midst 
of which the city sprang into being. As the commune 
increased in numbers and wealth it grew more and more 
impatient of the multitude of petty encroachments upon its 
absolute control within its own limits. Especially was this 
the case when the feudal lord of the place was a church- 
man. Lay seigniors not infrequently found their interest in 
making terms at once with the commune, swearing to pro- 
tect it, or even directly entering it and thus gaining power 
over its affairs. The church, on the other hand, regarded 
the commune as an organized attack upon its rights, and 
clerical lords held out against its demands until they were 
actually driven by violence to accede to them. It is in the 



534 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES, 

great episcopal cities of the north that we have the most 
striking ilhistrations of the immense force of the demo- 
cratic movement. 

The earUest demonstrations of communal energy in a 
political form in France were made at Le Mans and Cam- 

, _ _ brai in the last quarter of the eleventh century. 
mune at In the former case the rebellion of the citizens 

^ ^^^* was against a lay noble who was a vassal of 
William of Normandy. The commune here appears, not 
yet as a regularly organized administrative unit, but merely 
as a body of fighting men driven into action by a tyrannous 
ruler. They improved the absence of William in England 
to drive his governors out of the territory of Maine, and 
then declared their municipal independence. The com- 
mune was sworn to by the bishop and by the guardian of 
the minor count of Le Mans, but William, returning from 
England in 1075 with an army largely composed of Saxons, 
was able to put down this insurrection without great difficulty, 
and we hear nothing further of the commune of Le Mans. 

At Cambrai we find, running back through the records of a 
hundred years, continual evidence of bad feeling between the 

episcopal power, which held the feudal sover- 
At Cambrai. . . , . 1 1 i 1 r • • 

eignty of the city, and the body 01 citizens. 

The overlord of the place was the king of Germany. The 
first outbreak against the bishop in 1024 was easily re- 
pressed by the emperor's help. In 1064 another revolt 
went so far that the bishop was attacked and imprisoned 
by his subjects, and again the aid of the emperor was 
necessary to keep them in order. Once more, in 1076, 
they rose in rebellion, and this time formed a perpetual 
association or commune. The emperor, Henry IV, had his 
hands abundantly full with his own affairs, and the com- 
mune prospered accordingly. Not until the reign of Henry 
V (11 06-1 125), do we find any considerable reaction. In 



ESTABLISHMENT OE ERENCII COMMUNES. 535 

1 107 the commune was destroyed, only to be renewed again 
a few years later on a permanent basis, with very extended 
privileges. In these two cases, of Le Mans and Cambrai, the 
territories were, at the time of the communal movement, still 
outside the sphere of action of the kings of France. Upon 
strictly French territory the earliest commune 
SLQuentin!"^ ^^^ that of Noyon, formed by the inhabitants 
and ratified without much resistance by the bishop 
in 1 1 08. At nearly the same time St. Quentin received a 
charter from its overlord, the count of Vermandois. 

The example of these cities spread rapidly throughout the 
north and led to similar overturns in many other places. 
The history of the commune of Laon is the most 
of Laon^"^^^^ instructive in all respects, partly from the impor- 
tance of the place, partly from the persistence and 
intelligence shown by the citizens in their long struggle for 
liberty. The administration of the bishops, the feudal lords 
of Laon, had long been little more than a systematic plunder- 
ing of the citizens for the benefit of the ruling class, without 
regard to a due preservation of order, or even to the most 
common duties of protection. The bishopric was bought 
in 1 106 by a Norman soldier of fortune in a clerical gown, 
who took the office solely for what he could get out of it. 
Things went on from bad to worse until, during the bishop's 
absence in England, the citizens persuaded the dominant 
party of clerics and nobles to consent to the establishment 
of a commune in return for heavy promises of money. A 
government of mayor and aldermen (Jures) was set up and 
sworn to by clerics, nobles and bourgeois. The charter, 
an imitation of that of Noyon and St. Quentin, provided 
security for all classes, especially for the lower. The 
bishop, at first inclined to resist, was bought over, and the 
ratification of the charter by king Louis VI was also pur- 
chased by the obligation to pay a substantial annual tribute. 



536 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES 

Thus all parties seemed satisfied, and the commune went 
into operation to the immense improvement of all the con- 
ditions of life in the city. The only trouble was that the 
citizens, having shown their capacity and their willingness 
to pay for their privileges, had exposed themselves to ever 
new demands. Bishop, nobles and king put their heads 
together, each eager to squeeze the prosperous bourgeois 
to the limit of their endurance. The king, source of all 
justice as he was, greedily listened to the bishop's promise 
that he, the king, should get more out of the citizens by 
revoking their charter than by allowing it to 
stand. The citizens made the king's councillors 
a very liberal offer if they would advise him to stand 
firm, but the bishop went them several hundred pounds 
better and won the bargain. The moral baseness of the 
revocation was easily wiped out by the episcopal absolu- 
tion and the charter was declared null and void. The 
king, who had come to spend Easter at Laon, found it 
prudent to run away with his promises to pay in his 
pocket, leaving the bishop to take the brunt of the affair. 
The citizens, driven to fury by the combination of powers 
against them, rose in their might, broke the castle of 
the bishop, murdered him on his own ground, and as- 
sumed control ol the city, but found themselves at a 
complete loss what to do with it. Plainly, their ambitions 
had not gone beyond securing a decent administration; 
politically they were without plans. A momentary panic 
drove so many out of the city that the way was opened for 
a reaction by the party of the bishop, and a period of 
confusion followed, lasting about sixteen years. 

In 1 128 a new attempt at charter-making took place. 
The bishop fell in with the plan rather than risk the danger 
of a second rebellion, and the king gave his consent again, 
moved thereto, no doubt, by substantial arguments in cash 



THE COMMUNE OE LAON. 537 

and promises. It is noteworthy that this new charter 
describes the compact, not as '■^ communitas,^' but as ^^ insti- 
tutio pacis^"" the name " commune " being plainly one of evil 
omen. Thus things went on for more than a generation of 
peace and prosperity. In 1175 the bishop was again an 
ambitious noble who found the communal organization more 
than he could bear, and tried to bring king Louis VII into 
a combination against it. The king, however, stood by the 
commune as long as he lived, and actually helped it with 
soldiers against an attack by the bishop. His successor, 
Philip Augustus, began on the same line, but was gained 
over by the bishop, and, " to avoid all peril to his soul " 
declared the commune of Laon abolished as " contrary to 
the rights and privileges of the metropolitan church of St. 
Mary." Within a year, however, the king had forgotten all 
about his soul, and once more confirmed the charter of 
Louis VI, in consideration of two hundred pounds annually. 
In spite of continual friction between the citizens on the 
one hand and the bishop and chapter on the other, the 
commune continued until the reign of Philip IV without 
serious troubles. In 1294 a tumult between partisans of 
the bishop and citizens involved the latter in a charge of 
sacrilege, and on this count the Parlement declared the 
charter forfeited, but the king, who needed the good-will 
of all paying classes in his state, confirmed their commune 
"so long as it may please the royal will." Upon these 
terms the citizens retained their organization until the year 
133 1, when it was definitely abolished and the city brought 
under the prevotal system. The whole story of Laon illus- 
trates, throughout a period of two hundred years, the traits 
of civic energy, prudent use of the bourgeois weapon, 
money, and a clear sense of public administrative duty, 
joined with political short-sightedness, which mark, in one 
or another form, the progress of municipal life in France. 



538 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

The contrast with Italy is seen especially in the weaker 
sense of political advantage. While the Italian communes 
never, from the beginning, lost sight of their political inde- 
pendence as an ultimate aim, those of France allowed them- 
selves easily to be absorbed into the larger life of the great 
feudatory or of the crown. 

The government of the commune was vested in a select 
college of citizens called, variously, jui'ati., pares and scahini 
The c - {echevins), varying also in number from twelve to 
munai Ad- one hundred. Elected, by processes obscure to 
minis ra ion. ^^^ ^-^^ college chose from its midst one person 
as the executive head of the city with the title of mayor 
(major). In this organization we find, plainly, the counter- 
part of our boards of mayor and aldermen. Their functions 
were not merely executive ; in judicial affairs the 7?tajor and 
jiirati represent the commune, acting either with entire 
independence, or in conjunction with the lord and more or 
less subordinate to him. These officials were usually chosen 
from the leading commercial families of the city and repre- 
sent a very well-marked aristocratic tendency. The great 
mass of artisans in their trade guilds exercised at first little 
or no influence upon the government, and it is only towards 
the close of our period that we find them claiming and 
actually gaining rights as against their aristocratic fellow- 
citizens. 

The points of resemblance between the commune of the 

north of France and the consulate of the south are more 

striking than their points of difference. The 
Administra- r ^ ^ ^ 

tion of tlie source of the popular movement seems to have 

Consxaar been the same and its methods, at least, similar. 

The differences may, without great chance of 

error, be ascribed to that fundamental distinction between 

the lands of the droit coutiimier in the north and those of 

the droit ec7'it in the south, which marks the whole growth 



LAON.— COMMUNAL ADMINISTRATION. 539 

of French institutions. The model for the consular form 
of government is found in Italy, and all its arrangements 
suggest a more developed civilization. Especially in a 
more complete division of functions and in more elaborate 
processes of election, the consulate shows a larger capacity 
in political matters, a clearer comprehension of future diffi- 
culties and a greater skill in providing against them. The 
executive power in the southern city was in the hands of 
a board of "consuls," usually twelve, elected annually by 
complicated processes combining the principles of choice, 
appointment and chance very much as we find them em- 
ployed in the Italian cities. Next to the consuls was a 
general council varying in numbers from twenty-four to 
more than a hundred, who, acting with the consuls, formed 
the real government. In cases of especial public importance 
they summoned for consultation a still larger assembly 
called, as in Italy, parla??ientum, and representing in theory 
the great mass of the inhabitants. In fact, the parlamentum 
was composed only of the heads of families, noble or bour- 
geois, who constituted the body of citizens. The resem- 
blance to the Italian communities is still more clearly shown 
in the adoption by some of the southern cities of a chief 
magistrate called th.e podestaf, usually, as in Italy, a stranger 
in the city, and invested for a short term with chief execu- 
tive power, while the city constitution remained otherwise 
unchanged. 

The outcome of the municipal development in France, 
both south and north, was the same. The cities took their 

mx. T, ^ * part in the great centralizing; movement which 
The Fate of ^ *=> & 

Municipal resulted in the monarchy of Philip IV. At first 
itoerty. viewed with suspicion by the kings, they soon 

showed themselves ready to take up the royal cause as 
against the encroachments of feudalism. Then came a 
period of active alliance with the crown which placed the 



540 THE MIDDLE AND LOWER CLASSES. 

f 

bourgeoisie in possession of almost entire independence. 
The ally became dangerous and the monarchy, in extending 
the sphere of its influence, found itself compelled to abridge 
the very liberties it had been most active in furthering. All 
through the thirteenth century the annihilation of charters 
goes on rapidly. Not that the monarchy was opposed to 
city life as such. It was only determined to break down 
every form of political organization, feudal, clerical, munic- 
ipal or what not, that stood in its way. Once it had been 
glad to sell liberties to the communes to get money for 
its empty treasury ; now its ever-increasing resources were 
making it able to dispense with the support of any single 
element of the state, and even to bring any one of them to 
terms by employing others against it. 



CHAPTER XVT. 

THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

LITERATURE. 

The following works upon ecclesiastical law contain the basis of all 

detail upon the clerical organization: 
Corpus juris canonici, editio lipsietisis. ed. Friedberg. 2 pts. 1881. 
IsiDORUS Mercator. Decretales pseudo-isidorianae, etc. ed. Hin- 

schius. 1863. 
Tardif, a. Histoire des Sources du Droit Canonique. 1887. 
Maassen, Fr. Geschichte der Quellen Mnd der Literatur des canoni- 

schen Rechts im Abendlande. vol. i. 1870. 
Phillips, Geo. Kirchenrecht. 7 vols. 1872 (incomplete). The great 

Catholic work on Church Law. 
HiNSCHius, P. Das Kirchenrecht der Katholiken und Protestanten. 

4 vols. 1886. The principal Protestant authority, especially for 

Germany. 
Richter, a. L. Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen Kirchen- 

rechts. 8th ed. 1886. 
Friedberg, E. Lehrbuch des katholischen und evangelischen 

Kirchenrechts. 2d ed. 1884. 
ZoRN, Ph. Lehrbuch des Kirchenrechts. 1888. 

GOUSSET, T. M. J. Exposition des principes du droit canonique. 1868. 
Bright, Wm. Notes on the Canons of the first four General Coun- 
cils. 1882. 

A. The Secular Clergy. 

In tracing the history of the great clerical reform of the 
eleventh century we have had frequent occasion to refer to 
the nature of the episcopal office and its relations to the 
other elements of mediaeval church life. In the present 
chapter we shall bring together into one point of view all the 



542 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

grades of the ecclesiastical system and show in some detail 

their relative importance. The first great distinction in the 

clerical life is that between " secular " and " regu- 

'^^^ ^tI^I lar." The very plain difference between them 
as a Wiiole. ^ ^ 

is, in theory, that the secular clergy live in the 
world, among men, busied with the care of men's spiritual 
concerns and with this alone. They have, in other words, 
the " cure of souls " {cur a ani7Jiaruni). It is they, and they 
alone, who have in charge the administration of those great 
sacramental acts without which the life of the Christian 
cannot go on. 

As the church system had increased in vigor and effec- 
tiveness from the time of Gregory the Great onward, it had 
concentrated its force more and more upon the regular and 
punctilious performance of certain definite acts which it 
had come to dignify above all others by using for them the 
name "sacraments." The meaning of a sacrament in the 
church sense is "the outward sign of an inward grace." If 

it was indeed true that no virtuous action is 

The "Sacra- possible without a specific motion of the divine 

mental" .... . , , 

System. grace to mspire it, then it was of the utmost 

importance that this grace of God should be 

carried regularly and effectively to human society. The 

Christian clergy, originally a body selected for its virtue and 

learning to teach and to direct the organized life of the 

Christian communities, came in our period to be regarded 

primarily as the agency by which this transfer of the divine 

grace from God to man was to be accomplished. Its 

functions as teacher and guide were in danger of being 

forgotten in its anxiety to keep and to increase its hold 

upon the great trust it was believed to have in charge. 

The culmination of this tendency comes with the close of 

our period as shown in the systematic writings of the later 

Scholastics, especially in the Su?nma of Thomas Aquinas. 



THE SECULAR CLERGY. 543 

These writings may be regarded as the codification of the 
existing law of the church, as their contemporaries, the 
French coutimies and the German Spiegel, were codifications 
of the existing law of the state. 

According to these highest authorities, the essential quality 
of the sacramental act was that it gave to the person upon 
whom it was performed a " character " different from that 
which he had before. It was not merely the doing of a 
good thing like saying one's prayers or giving to a beggar 
or going to church, but it was an actual re-invig- 
erat m " oration of the highest spiritual nature by a 
process in which the individual most concerned 
had no essential part. Provided only that he did not resist, 
the grace of God worked through the sacramental act, when 
properly administered, without his will. It produced its 
effect '"'• opere operato,^^ i.e., by the mere accomplishment of 
the act itself, without regard to anything but the formal 
fitness of the person performing it. 

Now the only body capable of performing the sacramen- 
tal acts had come to be the organized priesthood. The 

priest, and he alone, was the vehicle by which 
The Clergy ^ ' -^ 

as Agents the absolutely necessary power of the divine 

of the assistance was carried to the individual man. 

Sacraments. 

So immensely important a part of the priestly 

function came very naturally to overshadow all the rest, and 
thus was evolved the astounding but perfectly logical doc- 
trine that the personal character of the priest had nothing 
to do with the effectiveness of his service. He might be 
the worst of men without being any the less a true priest. 
Of course the church in its official action never encourao:ed 
vice and it did what it could to keep its ministers clean, but 
still this element of formal in place of actual virtue kept on 
increasing and gave its character to the whole mediaeval 
system. The sacramental theory was developed with 



544 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

wonderful skill. It seized upon a man at his birth and 
accompanied him to his death, taking advantage of each of 
the great natural crises of human experience to bind him by 
one more link into its unbreakable chain. 

At his birth he was met by the first sacrament of Baptism, 
whereby the portion of "original sin," or actual guiltine-ss, 

which he had brought into the world with him, 
T e Seven ^^^ removed. During his period of childhood 

he was theoretically without such sin as brought 
guilt with it, but at the age of puberty he was received into 
the full membership of the Christian community of potential 
sinners by the act of Confirmation, whereby his sinlessness 
for the moment was established. The third and most 
sacred of the sacraments was the Eucharist, the vast impor- 
tance of which in the scheme of the church polity we have 
had occasion elsewhere to describe. In the individual case 
it meant the absolute identification for the moment, of the 
communicant with the person of Christ, and taken in con- 
nection with the fourth sacrament of Penance, it removed 
the guilt of whatever sin he might previously have com- 
mitted. The sacrament of Penance included confession in 
the ear of the priest as its natural foundation. The fre- 
quency of repetition in the performance of these two central 
sacramental acts was largely a matter for the individual 
conscience, but it was for the interest of the priesthood to 
keep up the zeal of the faithful by urging them to claim 
their benefits as often as possible. The celebration of the 
Eucharist came to be the centre of the public religious 
service, — not the sermon, the exhortation to right living, 
but this mystical, miraculous act of divine interference with 
the ordinary course of divine action, was made the all- 
absorbing object of interest to the Christian world. It must 
be repeated at least once a year during life, and finally, 
when life seemed nearing its close, this sacrament, under 



THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS. 545 

the name of the Last Unction, was the last action of the 
human soul trying to keep itself in harmony with the divine. 
These live sacraments have reference to the life of the 
individual. Two others applied to two of the most impor- 
tant social relations. Marriage, sacramentally 
Marriage. , ,. . . , . '^ 

treated, gave a religious character to the tie of 

the family, and to all those complicated legal and economic 
conditions that resulted from it. By gaining this vast field 
of human interest for itself the church was able to impress 
upon society the supreme importance of a religious basis to 
human action, and also — this must be said to its eternal 
credit — it was able through this means to soften and 
humanize the ways of living in a society little raised above 
primary barbaric instincts. The seventh sacrament was 
that of the consecration of the priest, or " Holy Orders." 
It was the outward representation of the idea 
° -^ „ contained in the great theory of apostolic suc- 
cession. According to that idea, the act of the 
priest was valid only by virtue of a specific divine commission 
carried down to him by an uninterrupted succession from 
the apostles. Any break in this chain of succession would, 
logically, endanger the souls of all those who had received 
the sacramental acts through a channel so perverted. Thus 
the sacrament of holy orders is the key to all the rest, for 
upon it depends the validity of the whole sacramental 
system. If the priest be not properly consecrated he can- 
not partake of the divine gift, and hence cannot properly 
impart it to others. 

We thus come to consider in some detail the various 
elements in the priestly hierarchy. Strictly considered, no 
human office can be higher than that of the 
Rani simple priest, since by the sacrament of holy 

orders he becomes possessed of the highest con- 
ceivable earthly function. All the higher stages of the 



546 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

hierarchy are, therefore, but variations upon this one central 
office, and have come into being rather by the necessities of 
human organization than by virtue of any essential dis- 
tinction. By analogy with civil affairs, as there must be 
governors to secure a decent and orderly administration in 
public life, so in religious affairs there must be authority, to 
keep the machinery of church organization in proper working 
order. 

The whole question of the origin of the hierarchy belongs 
to an earlier period. By the time of Charlemagne there 

is no question that the diocesan bishop had 

The Bishop. , , . . , . , . . , . , 

become distinctly the central ngure of clerical 

life. A great part of the church legislation of the Carolin- 
gians had turned upon the one question of stricter organiza- 
tion, and in this effort the weight of emphasis was all upon 
the duty of the bishop on the one hand and the reverence 
due to him on the other. With the progress of feudalism 
the bishop had gone on gaining in dignity and authority 
until we find him at the close of our period ranking in every 
respect with the highest in the land.— Going back to the 
sacramental system as the reason for existence of the 
hierarchy, we find the bishop distinguished above the com- 
mon clergy by the fact that two of the most important 
.sacraments were specially reserved for him. He did not 
receive with his higher office any higher consecration, but 
it seemed specially fitting that, as the executive officer of a 
diocese, he should have especial charge of admissions to 
membership both in the lay and clerical elements of the 
religious society, and hence he was regularly entrusted with 
the performance of the rites of confirmation and of holy 
orders. 

The bishop was the executive and responsible head of a 
diocese, ?>., of a territory, larger or smaller, in which there 
might be any number of parish churches, each under the 



THE SECULAR CLERGY. 547 

immediate charge of a priest {presbyter). As a clerical 
personage his function was to oversee the conduct of pub- 
lic service and the administration of charity in 

Til p Tiiopp^p 

his whole diocese, to secure proper persons for 
his subordinates and to see that they did their duty. He 
had, moreover, by the legislation of Charlemagne, and in 
virtue of the whole episcopal theory, supervision of the 
monastic houses lying within the limits of his diocese, but 
this was always a point of bitter controversy between the 
regular and secular clergy, and the episcopal supervision 
was apt to be anything but effective. 

By far the most interesting aspect of the bishop's office 
is its dual character. The mediaeval bishop was not merely 
Tern oral ^ clerical personage. He was at the same time 
Functions of the administrator of vast temporal interests. 
e IS op. rpj^g mediaeval church was not, in any modern 
sense, a state institution. It was protected by the state, 
but not supported by it. Like all other officials, the clergy 
were supported by the income of definite parcels of land, 
and the mediaeval idea did not separate sharply the posses- 
sion or even the use of land and the exercise of jurisdiction 
over the inhabitants of that land. Thus the bishop, as the 
chief administrator of a great landed possession, was drawn 
into all the complicated business of a secular government. 
As far back as Charlemagne's time we have bishops actually 
invested with the functions of the count, and, as the feudal 
system developed, such cases became so frequent as to be, 
in many parts of Europe, almost the rule. The bishop 
became, by virtue of his office, a vassal of the seignior in 
whose territory his lands might lie, and he also became in 
his turn a seignior, often on a great scale, with vassals and 
sub-vassals, ruling over a very wide extent of country. 

Everything that we have said about the rights and duties 
of feudal princes applies with equal truth to the bishop — 



548 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

with one very great exception. The hiy fief was, from an 
early day, hereditary; the ecclesiastical fief passed from one 
hand to another by virtue of an election. As 
SirSshop. ^^ ^-^^^^^ ^ bishop was properly to be elected 
there was never a doubt in any one's mind. 
^'- Clero et popiilo'''' was a canonical phrase, easil)^ enough 
understood, and plainly enough intended to exclude every 
form of influence through the government or from any 
source whatever except the body of persons over whom the 
new bishop was to have authority. xA.s time went on, 
however, it became more and more impossible to keep the 
episcopal election within such narrow lines. It became 
involved with every form of seigniorial interests both from 
above and from below. The filling of a vacant bishopric 
with the right man was a matter of immense importance to 
every landholder in the vicinity, especially so to the direct 
lord of the land, and most of all to the overlord, the 
king. 

We have already seen, in considering the causes of the 

wars of the Investiture, how completely the lay control of the 

p lit' 1 episcopate had taken the place of its purely 

Aspect of the clerical origin. Although the greatest violence 

piscopa e. ^£ ^i^^^j. (^Q^-^f|i(.^ i^w upon Germany, no country 

of Europe was free from it. The agents of the reform 
were the papacy and the monastic party in close alliance, 
both hostile to the laification of the clerical function, but — 
and here was the centre of all troubles — both wishing to 
keep all the advantages of temporal property and temporal 
rights, without suffering any loss in spiritual influence. The 
reform party refused even to consider the separation of the 
spiritual and the temporal qualities of the clergy, while 
demanding at the same time that all other temporal powers 
should refrain from using any influence whatever on the 
sacred rights of the church. 



THE SECULAR CLERGY. 549 

The results of these extravagant claims make up a great 
part of mediaeval politics. We follow now the episco- 
pal institution itself. At first the bishop was 
and the included with the rest of the clergy of his 

Chapter. church in the economic arrangements of the 
diocese, but as his office rose in importance we see 
emerging gradually, but distinctly, two separate person- 
alities, the bishop and the "chapter," each with its own 
property in land and revenues. These two economic units 
were frequently in conflict with each other, each claiming 
the enjoyment of some revenue or some privilege. They 
were both feudal persons, holding estates in fief and 
granting them out on the same kind of tenure. The chapter 
was composed of all the secular clergy attached to the 
cathedral church. Its organization was of a semi-monastic 
character. In some cases its members (canons) were bound 
by vows not very different from those of monks. The strict 
organization of the northern canonicate dates 
Ree 1 ^°^^ from the eighth century, when a certain Chro- 
degang, bishop of Metz, for the purpose of 
keeping a better control over his clergy, brought them 
together into a common house and established a rule for 
them which came as near the rule of St. Benedict as was 
possible without too great interference with their secular 
functions. Their movement in society was necessarily more 
free than that of the monk, and they were allowed to retain 
in their canonicate something of individual rank and 
property. These secular monks, if we may so call them, 
were known as " canons regular." During the earlier part 
of our period their organization was maintained with a good 
deal of strictness, but declined in the later part. 

The clergymen forming the chapter were of course 
members of the ordinary ecclesiastical grades below the 
bishopric, presbyters, deacons or sub-deacons, but their 



550 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

position as canons, especially in a large cathedral church, 
came to overshadow, in dignity and value, all lesser dis- 
tinctions. Their places were eagerly sought for by leading 
families, and their order became distinctly one of the great 
feudal powers in public life. The chapter, like every other 

feudal landholder, had also riMits of iurisdic- 
Hostmty . , . .' , ^ ■" . , 

between tion, and mamtamed, the more as our period 

Bishop and advanced, a complete separate establishment of 
Chapter, , . . . 

admmistrative offices. More and more it eman- 
cipated itself from episcopal control, and allied itself with 
the powers hostile to the bishop. Especially in the long- 
continued struggle of the papacy to gain a hold upon the 
clergy of every country, the chapter often furnished a lever- 
age against the bishop which the papacy knew well how to 

* J t. apply. So also, here as elsewhere, it was in the 
fomented by ^^ ■' ' ... 

Papacy and interest of the royal power to divide authority 
Crown. ^1^^^ -^ might the more easily, when the time 

came, insert the wedge of its own jurisdiction and gradu- 
ally force both parties to accept its control. So far did this 
split in the cathedral churches of France go that we find 
chapters totally exempt from the episcopal jurisdiction, 
calling councils, trying clerical cases, and even exercising 
the right of excommunication. Under the leadership of 
their elected chief, the dean {decanus)., they gained and 
enjoyed great revenues, partly from the estates with which 
each individual canonry was endowed, partly from the 
official fees connected with every act of service, and partly 
from their share in all the rich donations continually made 
to the cathedral as a whole. 

As we leave the great church centres and pass out into 
the open country, we find the service of religion in the 
hands of a vast body of parochial clergy. The unit of 
division is the parish, a fixed territorial limit, intended to 
include a certain minimum number of souls, usually at least 



THE SECULAR CLERGY. 551 

ten families. The cure of souls is in the hands of a priest 
under the absolute control of the bishop of the diocese. 
His appointment, however, comes from the 
The aris u pg^^j-Qj^ " Qf ^j^g parochial church, ?>., the per- 
son, lay or clerical, to whom the church property 
belongs, confirmed by the consent of the bishop. Perhaps 
the normal condition may be said to be that of lay patron- 
age, but during the ages of religious reform there was a 
drift in the other direction, laymen giving up their patron- 
age into the hands of clergymen, and especially of monastic 
corporations. At first the occupant of the church was 
necessarily a secular clergyman, but monasteries soon came 
to place one of their members, especially endowed with 
priestly orders, into the place, and then the "purification" 
of the clergy in that parish was held to be complete. This 
transformation was the work of the Cluny-Gregorian reform 
and wherever it was accomplished the purely ecclesiastical 
nature of the parish life was permanently fixed. 

At the beginning of our period the marriage of the parish 
clergy was so common that we may safely call it normal ; at 
Influence of ^^^ close the clerical marriage was uniformly 
Clerical regarded as wrong. The great leniency of the 

arriage. church towards concubinage and other forms of 
clerical incontinence makes it evident that there were other 
reasons for its opposition to the lawful marriage of priests 
besides the usually alleged moral ones. If we compare the 
economic condition of the parish priest with that, for in- 
stance, of the free landholder, we find it in many ways 
similar. Each was supported by the income of certain 
lands held under the control of a feudal superior. Neither 
had any other support for a possible family than this same 
land. Hence, as we have seen, the great effort to make 
such lands heritable, and, in the case of the free layman, the 
general success of the effort. Now, if the parish clergyman 



552 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

was to have a legitimate family, it was plain that the beni- 
fice would rapidly tend to become hereditary. Either the 
lay son would carry the estate out of clerical hands entirely, 
or else the clerical class itself must become hereditary and 
its members thus pass out of the control of all appointing 
authority. In the one case the church would lose its prop- 
erty ; in the other it would keep it, but only at the price of 
losing all that quality of selection for fitness which was its 
chief guarantee of value and its chief claim to distinction. 
Either of these alternatives was intolerable to a vigorous 
church administration. The Cluny influence revolted against 
the debasement of the priestly character implied in an 
hereditary priesthood ; the local diocesan party was alarmed 
at the prospect of losing its property by the inheritance of 
lay sons. 

Before the reform the parish churches were treated like 
any other pieces of feudal property, handed about from one 
"R f " possessor to another and in all economic respects 
of Parish indistinguishable from lay holdings. Their oc- 
^^^^' cupants were more lay than clerical, rather so 

many guardians of valuable pieces of property than pious 
and learned ministers of religion. The capture of the parish 
clergy by the monastic influence was the only conceivable 
process by which a purer state of things could be brought 
about. The monastic clergy, working from the nearest avail- 
able point, tried either to force the incumbent of a parish 
church to take the vows of celibacy, or, what was a more 
thoroughgoing method, they themselves gained possession 
of the parish and placed in office one of their own number. 
By this transformation the actual administration of the cure 
of souls passed into monastic hands and, in so far as the 
monastery was independent of the bishop, it passed out of 
episcopal control. Hence in great part the hostility of the 
episcopal order. Thus, wholly aside from moral grounds, 



THE SECULAR CLERGY. 553 

we see that the reform of the eleventh century had its roots 

in great social and economic changes going on throughout 

Europe. 

Between the parish clergy and the bishop we find two 

administrative degrees corresponding to the lower feudal 

grades in civil life. The immediate execution of 

J^^ the episcopal orders was intrusted to the care of 

presbyter. . 

an official called the arch-priest (archipresbyter) 
or rural dean {decanus ru7'aiis), himself a parish clergyman, 
but set over a group of other parishes as inspector of church 
life in general and with certain minor judicial functions. 

Above the rural dean we find the archdeacon 
"^^^ ^ (archidiacoJitis), an officer placed over a larger 

group of parishes and vested with much more 
extensive functions, — so extensive indeed that in many 
cases he became a dangerous rival of the bishop. Especially 
was this the case with the archdeacon of a great city church. 
He was the most important member of the chapter and, as 
such, was in position to make his authority encroach upon 
that of the bishop at many points. In the long run the 
bishops, supported by popes and councils, succeeded in 
overcoming the threatening danger and the archidiaconate 
became finally what it was originally, a subordinate execu- 
tive office of the bishopric. 

Threatened from below by the archdeacon and by the 
ever-widening influence of the monastic clergy, the bishop 

was even more limited at times by the pressure 
The "Metro- from above of the "metropolitan" or archbishop. 
ArcliWsliop. These two terms are, of all the clerical titles, the 

most difficult to define, chiefly be'cause their 
meaning shifts from time to time and varies greatly with 
difference of place. The metropolitan was, as his name 
implies, the bishop of a metropolis ; — but what was a 
metropolis ? Was it simply a large city ? — or the capital of 



554 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM 

a political province ? — or an apostolic foundation ? — or a 

royal residence? On all these points controversies arose 

and in no case was "the general question authoritatively 

decided. The archbishopric may be regarded :>s an element 

in that attempt at more complete organization which is the 

_inost striking feature of Charlemagne's church legislation. 

Charlemagne had plainly in mind a system which, beginning 

with the parish priest and the monk, should find its natural 

head in the chief ecclesiastic of a province, from whom an 

appeal lay to the emperor alone. It will be remembered 

that in Charlemagne's scheme the papacy does not enter. 

During a short time after Charlemagne the establishment of 

archbishoprics goes on, but in the course of our ..armccs 

development makes little progress, and the position ox Li.e 

archbishop becomes, on the whole, less and less distinctive 

and effectual. The title remains and the dignity continues 

to be sousfht with eaoerness. In a few cases. 
Political ..... 

Importance ^vhere the archiepiscopate is joined with great 

of the political infiuence, as for instance, in Rheims, 

Archbisliop. ^^ , ^^ . ^ ^„ . , . n 

Cologne, .Mamz, Milan, it represents a clerical 

element of vast importance, but even here the influence of 

the see is due rather to outward reasons than to anything in 

the nature of the office itself. The essence of the office 

consists in its control over a body of suffragans, and this 

control is precisely the thing hardest for it to maintain. 

The outline of the whole question is seen in the contro- 

. versies of Hincmar of Rheims in the ninth century. 

Hincmar was involved in difficulties in every direction, but 

especially with his suft'ragan bishops and with the pope who 

supported them. In his case the office of metropolitan was 

identified with the national cause, and it is under this form 

that it survives in its most important aspects. Most of the 

archbishoprics ceased to have any specific meaning, beyond 

that of bishoprics in general. Those only retained a 












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THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 555 

controlling influence over great bodies of suffragans, which 
were in some way identified with political interests; so, for 
example, Canterbury in England, Rheims in France, Mainz, 
Treves and Cologne in Germany. The occupants of these 
great sees were ex officio the most prominent representatives 
of the clergy in their respective countries and as such were 
the natural advisers of the government in church matters. 
They were in the main, and with some exceptions, the 
defenders of the national church as against papal or other 
aggression. They claimed and exercised, often with much 
resistance from other prelates, the right to crown the king. 
In Germany, especially as the electoral monarchy went on 
developing its popular character, the nucleus of the electing 
body which finally came to control it, was the group of 
three Rhenish archbishoprics. 

The especial insignium of the archbishop was the pal- 
lium or collar of state which, according to long tradition, 

must be s^ranted by the pope. This point of 
The PalUum. . ^ ^ 11 , r 

connection was irequently the ground of extrava- 
gant papal claims over the metropolitans, but in the main 
the national character of the office overcame the papal. A 
method of combining the two was to invest the archbishop 
with the functions of a papal legate. In quiet times this 
might work well, but when the issue of papacy versus the 
nation came uppermost again, the union of two such hostile 
powers generally showed itself to be an illusion. 

B. The Monastic Clergy. 

By the time of Charlemagne the monastic principle, 
oriental in its origin, had become thoroughly incorporated 
into the life of the western world. The legislation of the 
Capitularies recognized monasteries as a regular part of the 
church organization, and provided for their administration 



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556 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

by putting them definitely under the government of the 
bishops in whose dioceses they lay. This provision was 

quite in accordance with that spirit of order and 
a Fixed F^^ regularity which marks the whole activity of 

the great lawgiver, but it was opposed to ten- 
dencies stronger even than the will of the emperor or the 
loyalty of his people. It seemed to the monastic clergy 
themselves contrary to that reverence for the ascetic char- 
acter which lay at the bottom of their whole system, and 
they spared no pains to counteract this dangerous tendency 
by every means in their power. And, on the other hand, 
the sentiment of the western world was pointing in the 
same direction. Kings might legislate, but nothing could 
check the growing feeling throughout the society of Europe 
that a monk was a better man than a priest, and it was this 
sentiment which worked most powerfully to overcome the 
force of such laws as we have mentioned. 

The subject of mediaeval monasticism is the most difficult 
one with which we have to deal. And this chiefly because 

-, .. . it brings us to such curious contradictions and 
Monasticism ^ 

a Complicated conflicts of ideas. Nothing is easier than to 
ys em. state the monastic principle : — poverty, com- 

plete abandonment of all idea of wealth, so that one might 
be independent of those motives which lead men to their 
meanest actions ; " chastity," the denial of the most natural 
human instincts in order that one might be free to devote 
himself to the highest objects of which he was capable ; 
obedience, the sacrifice of the individual to the trained will 
of a superior so that he might apply his powers with the 
least possible waste to the work of helping mankind. — This 
seems all very lofty and at the same time very easy to 
understand. But along with this noble endeavor we see 
running from the beginning what appear to be exactly 
opposite tendencies. The vow of poverty did not prevent 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 557 

the monastery from being the keenest gainer of lands and 

the most careful holder of them. The sacrifice of self 

implied in the vow of chastity was accompanied by a greed 

of temporal power which sent monks to the front in all the 

political scheming of the middle period. The subjection of 

the individual to the will of the superior was only the means 

whereby that will was to be made effective in controlling the 

whole social order. 

The Age of Hildebrand, that is, the latter half of the 

eleventh century, is the point at which all these contra- 

^ . dictory tendencies come out into the clearest 
Monasteries ^ 

exploited light. Between Charlemagne and Hildebrand 
Dy Rulers. ^^ monastic institution went on developing with 
enormous strides. The breaking up of the Carolingian 
empire contributed to this, as it did to every other form 
of localizing power. The new states, uncertain of their 
hold upon their subjects, had found it for their momentary 
interest to confirm the monastic establishments in the pos- 
session of powers which must eventually prove almost fatal 
to the state idea. Sometimes, as in France, the great wealth 
and influence of the monastery became dangerous so early 
that in the ninth century and all through the tenth we find 
the chief abbacies in the hands of laymen, great feudal lords, 
who found their profit, not in destroying the monastic insti- 
tution, but in putting themselves at the head of it. It was 
not uncommon here for a leading nobleman, such a man, for 
instance, as Hugh Capet, to be the lay-abbot of several rich 
foundations, drawing their revenues and making use of them 
in every way to maintain his own power. Such an arrange- 
ment had the double advantage that the sacred character of 
the institution was maintained and used as the means of 
holding property together, while at the same time this prop- 
erty was not withdrawn from the practical purposes of pub- 
lic life. The lay-abbacy, however, was never regarded with 



558 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

favor by the church and was one of the abuses against which 

the revived monastic zeal of the tenth century protested most 

vigorously and most successfully. 

The history of mediaeval monasticism is the history of a 

series of great revivals. The singular thing is that when 

the monasteries of a country had got into a bad 

Monastic way it never occurred to-those most interested 
Revivals. •' 

in the welfare of society that the fault might 
be in the very nature of the monastic principle itself, but 
they invariably concluded that the only trouble was that 
this principle had not been carried out thoroughly enough. 
Not less monasticism, but more was needed in order to 
keep the monastic idea pure and thus effectual. So we 
have, over and over again, great waves of monastic reform 
sweeping over European society and carrying with them, let 
it be fairly understood, usually all that was best and most 
forward-looking in the community. The conclusion we have 
to draw from this fact is that the mediaeval world was right ; 
that it knew its own needs and was trying to provide for 
them in its own way. Our business is, not to criticise these 
means of social improvement, but — and this is far more 
difficult — to understand them. 

The earliest effort at monastic organization after the time 
of Charlemagne is that which has become famous in connec- 
tion with the name of Benedict of Aniane in 

Benedict southern France. The personal history of this 

of Aniane. ^ ■' 

man is similar to that of many other leaders in 

ascetic movements. He belonged to a noble family, and 

had every prospect of worldly success before him, but early 

became convinced of the vanity of all things earthly, gave 

up his wealth and put himself into a monastery. His aim 

was to restore the full rigor of the rule of St. Benedict. 

As long as Charlemagne lived, this attempt met with little 

success beyond the immediate circle of Benedict's influence. 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 559 

Charlemagne was already suspicious that the monastic life 

was becoming too frequently an excuse for withdrawal from 

that service to the state which was, after all, the chief end 

of all his institutions. He was not a hater of monks, but 

he was the last person to have sympathy with any fanatical 

excesses whatever, and we have evidence that he thought of 

monasteries rather as seats of good learning, where men 

could be prepared for usefulness in the church, than as 

hot-beds for developing an ascetic piety. 

The death of Charlemagne and the accession of his pious 

son was the signal for the immediate ripening of the plans 

of Benedict of Aniane. He had been personally 
Strict Organ- _,,.,,, 

ization of known to Louis while the latter was governor of 

Monasticism Aquitaine, and was soon called to the court at 
by Louis I. 

Aachen and there given a commission, the like 

of which had never been heard of in Frankish lands before. 
He was made general supervisor of the monasteries through- 
out the kingdom and given liberty to introduce everywhere 
those principles of strict observance which he had carried 
through in his own region. We have little information as 
to how this commission was carried out, but the effects of 
a renewed monastic zeal become very soon evident. The 
growth of monasteries during the reign of Charlemagne had 
been slow. Now they increase with great rapidity. The 
king summoned, in the year 817, a convention of abbots 
from all parts of the kingdom, and the result of their deliber- 
ations was a long decree, in which we may read the detail of 
the new reformatory ideas. Their tendency is throughout 
in the direction of the ascetic side of the monastic life. 
The cultivation of the intellect is entirely overlooked. The 
monks are not to keep school in the monastery except for 
the oblati, the boys who had been devoted to the monastery 
by their parents, and who were held to a strict observance of 
the vows in which they had had no share. Two paragraphs 



560 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM 

of this decree are especially noteworthy : the king grants 
such monasteries as seemed to need it exemption from their 
public burdens, and he takes pains to ascertain and publish 
which had the right to choose their abbots from among the 
monks themselves. The latter clause was directed evidently 
against the abuse of the lay-abbacy, already beginning to 
make itself felt. 

A still further enforcement of the monastic idea is seen in 
an edict of Louis, probably of the same time, establishing 

the " canonical life " of the secular clergy, on 
"Canonical the basis of the rule of Chrodegang. His plan 
* ^' was to introduce into all cathedrals, all churches 

which had grown out of monastic foundations, and all others 
where there was a considerable body of clergymen, the same 
principles of the common life Avhich had been laid down for 
the canons of Metz. 

In these two efforts, to fix the Benedictine rule, in its 
strict interpretation, upon all Frankish monasteries and to 

bring the parish clergy of all the larger church 

Effects centres into a common life, cut off from family 

m France ' ■' 

and other social ties, we have the foundation of 
the great conflict of the Middle Ages between the ascetic 
idea on the one hand and the practical demands of a human 
society on the other. Both attempts met with vigorous 
opposition. The absolute withdrawal of the monasteries, 
with their great and increasing wealth in land, from secular 
control found bitter opponents in the great nobility, who 
looked to these lands for their own advantage. The canon- 
ical life did not commend itself to ambitious young men, 
who, while leading the clerical life, did not care to find 

themselves cut off from all connection with the 

^^\ lar2;er interests of politics or social advance- 

in Germany. =5 ^ 

ment. In France, the lay abbacy maintained 
itself and gained ground. In Germany, where the monastic 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 561 

impulse seems to have been on the whole more pure, 
as it was more novel, a multitude of new foundations 
sprang up in all directions, especially in Saxony. It would 
not be too much to say that the civilization of the Saxon 
people, along the lines of the Romanic-Christian culture, 
was due primarily to the monastic houses, which, during 
and soon after the time of Louis, attracted to themselves 
many of the best of the Saxon youth. But it should not 
be forgotten that this very work of culture was in itself a 
protest against that extreme ascetic view of the monastic 
institution, Vv^hich would have made all monks into madmen 
and beggars and so have crippled permanently the usefulness 
of their organization. 

The very strictness of the effort in Louis' time seems to 
have brought about a reaction. During the whole of the 
ninth century complaints of the loose life of the 
\^R^ ■ 1 "^o^ks ^'^^ frequent, and the remedy was again 
sought in tightening the reins. The ascetic 
spirit, not dead, but only incapable of holding its own 
against the more natural impulses of men, comes again 
to the rescue and, in following it, we are brought to the 
history of the greatest mediaeval movement of the kind, 
the " Cluny Reform." By this term we do not mean that 
every reformatory effort in the religious life of the tenth 
and eleventh centuries was directly connected with the 
monastery of Cluny, but only that a certain character was 
given to this kind of activity by the Cluniac monks, which 
proved to be the right thing for the age and has therefore 
given its name to all similar movements. 

The monastery of Cluny was founded by an Aquitanian 
nobleman in the year 910. Its situation on the borders of 
Aquitaine and Burgundy made it peculiarly adapted to 
serve as a central point of influence for the most cultivated 
and, religiously, most sensitive population of the West. A 



562 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

series of capable abbots and the protection of powerful 
neighbors soon gave it a prominence which attracted the 

attention of the papacy. Not that the papacy of 
of*Climv°^ the early tenth century was on the lookout for 

means to help the world along. We have 
already seen that it had fallen into an almost hopeless 
insignificance in the midst of the squabbles of the Roman 
nobility to get it into their hands and had only been raised 
by the tyranny of Alberic into momentary respectability. 
With this decline of the Roman bishopric there had gone 
on an almost complete demoralization of the monastic life 
in Italy. The history of the monastery of Farfa, which has 
been preserved to us, is typical of what was , happening 
elsewhere. The bonds of discipline seem to have been 
completely relaxed ; the vast landed property of the order 
had been divided up among the monks who, instead of 
living together under the rules of the common life, had 
scattered about over the farms, enjoying the pleasures of 
the world, getting what they could out of the estates, wasting 
the income in riotous living, without a thought of their 
religious character and without any control which could 
bring them back to a better way. 

Alberic, clear-sighted in this as in other respects, had no 
sooner got himself well established at the head of Roman 

affairs than he turned his attention to reforming 
recognized these evils. We find the abbot of Cluny a 
at Rome frequent and honored visitor to Rome and, one 

after another, the monasteries in and about the 
city were put under the care of men who had been trained 
in his school. The ancient abbey of Monte Casino, the 
earliest foundation of the Benedictine order, and to this day 
the most honored seat of the monastic world, was the first 
to feel this new impulse and became the secondary source 
from which its agents could be supplied. The abbey of 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 563 

St. Mary on the Aventine hill was founded by Alberic 
himself, who gave for the purpose his own family palace. 
It is here that we afterwards find the headquarters of the 
Cluny abbots whenever they came to Rome. The abbot 
Odo was made overseer of all the monasteries in the Roman 
territory. Singular that in the reports of these events there 
is scarcely a mention of the popes. The reform of the 
church as well as of the state was plainly in the hands of 
the tyrant. Even Farfa, though lying outside the proper 
territory of Rome, felt the force of the new enthusiasm. 
King Hugo had been induced by bribery to let the monks 
alone in their scandalous violation of their vows, but as soon 
as he was out of the way Alberic sent monks of Cluny to 
spread the reform there also. This failing he marched 
against Farfa, drove out the abbot, introduced his reformers 
by force and put a new abbot at their head. The rebellious 
monks found a way to dispose of their new chief, however, 
and the monastery could not be described as " reformed " 
until the time of the Ottos. 

The process which we have seen going on at Rome was the 
same followed elsewhere, whenever the desire of the resident 
monks themselves or the enthusiasm of some 
the Reform temporal ruler found in the ideas of the Cluny 
reform the promise of improvement to society. 
New centres were formed in the various countries of the 
continent, from which, as occasion required, parties of 
monks were sent to any monastery, there to teach the new 
rules and remain long enough to see that they were seriously 
adopted. Such a centre in Germany was the monastery of 
Hirschau in Swabia, of which we have an interesting 
account in the life of its abbot William. 

The immediate outward result of the efforts of Cluny was 
the establishment, for the first time in Europe, of what 
came to be known as a "(Congregation," i.e., an association 



564 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

of monasteries, in which a common principle of adminis- 
tration had been introduced and which were guided in their 
affairs by that one among them from which the movement 

of association had gone out. The " Congrega- 
The "Con- ^ion of Cluny " spread during the tenth century 
of Cltmy." throughout all the countries of Europe. Its 

members were partly new houses, founded 
directly by monks of Cluny and partly older foundations, 
which'had received from it their reformatory impulse. The 
abbot of Cluny was probably, next to the pope and fre- 
quently far more than he, the leading clerical personage in 
Europe. He was regarded personally as the head of the 
whole congregation, with its hundreds of houses, its enormous 
landed estates and its far-reaching control over the actions 
of men. It would not be to our purpose to go into the detail 
of the process by which this Burgundian monastery gained 
its extraordinary hold upon the mediaeval conscience. It 
was essentially the same process as that we have already 
examined in the time of Louis the Pious. 

More interesting is the fact that the extreme ascetic idea 
could not, after all, succeed in checking the movement of 

the human mind toward a higher culture and a 

Conflict broader view of life. The aim of the Cluny 

with Classic , , ^ -i i r i • 

Learning-. abbots was as far as possible from being an 

educational one. The story of the abbot Odo 

(p. 444) is a true reflection of the higher sentiment on 

this point. Cluny gave the tone to European monasti- 

cism, but for all that the course of learning was not to 

be permanently checked. The teaching, even of the 

monastery boys, could not fail to bear fruit, and in spite 

of all resistance the permanent charm of ancient literature 

continued to assert itself here and there with sufficient 

vigor to keep it alive until this ascetic pressure should 

be removed. 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 565 

The development of a monastery, within the lines, terri- 
torial and administrative, of both the civil and ecclesiastical 

« ... ^ governments, could not go on without frequent 

Conflicts ^ . . P . ^ 

with the occasions of difference in both directions. As 
Civil Power against encroachments of the civil power, the 
usual means of defense was to obtain from that power itself 
such grants of immunity from jurisdiction and from the 
ordinary burdens of property as would secure the monastery 
for all time. These grants were then preserved with the 
most jealous care, and at every change in the civil authority, 
such as the accession of a new prince, the monastery took 
great care to have all its previous grants and privileges 
renewed. We have now, thanks to the diligence of scholars, 
an immense mass of record-books, the so-called " cartu- 
laries," in which these charters are preserved for all the 
most important monasteries of Europe. On the whole, it 
would be safe to say that these grants of the civil powers 
were fairly well observed. 

A far more jealous rival of the monastic house was the 
local ecclesiastical authority, centred in the bishop of the 
. diocese in which the monastery lay. It was the 

Episcopal interest of the bishop to keep as large a measure 
ys em. ^£ ^qj^j-j-q} over the religious house as possible, 

and as, one after another, these rights of control slipped 
away, he became only so much the more eager to save what 
was left to him. The monastic clergy had not long been 
satisfied with their peculiar lines of religious activity, and 
had demanded and obtained for themselves most of the 
rights belonging more properly to the secular clergy. The 
confirmation of these rights had come mainly from the 
papacy, which had seen from the beginning the chance 
offered it by the monasteries of getting in every country 
a vast body of allies who would be likely to stand by it in 
the inevitable conflicts with all local independence, ecclesi- 



566 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

astical as well as civil. The " religiosi " had gained for 
themselves, above all, the right of administering the sacra- 
ments, the very function which was the peculiar distinction 
of the parish priest. 

A very characteristic episode in the history of Cluny at 
the time of its greatest success will illustrate this point. 

The abbey had already gained from successive 
M^n^^ popes almost everything it could desire, but still 

lacked the right to perform those peculiar func- 
tions of ordination and confirmation which belonged specifi- 
cally to the office of the bishop. When it was necessary to 
consecrate an abbot, to confer orders upon a monk, to 
consecrate a subject church, the abbey must needs appeal 
to the episcopal power for the service. But it was one of 
the dearest privileges claimed by Cluny that it was to be 
free in its choice of the bishop it would call upon, without 
regard to the question in what diocese the function was to 
be performed. Against this claim the bishops of Macon, 
in whose diocese Cluny was situated, maintained that they 
and they alone could properly perform episcopal functions 
in that diocese, and in the year 1025, while the great Odilo 
was abbot, the case came before a provincial Burgundian 
synod, and in spite of the papal documents which Odilo 
was able to produce, the synod declared it uncanonical that 
any bishop should perform episcopal functions in the dio- 
cese of another, and gave the case to the bishop of Macon. 
Odilo still stood by his point, and a short time afterward 
allowed another foreign bishop to consecrate an altar at 
Cluny. Again the bishop of Macon, the successor of the 
one in the former case, claimed his right and threatened the 
abbot. Odilo yielded, but this was almost the last case of 
effectual assertion of the diocesan principle. The time of 
Hildebrand was approaching, when the papacy found means 
to enforce its orders and to make them respected. 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 567 

The influence of Cluny during the tenth century is to be 
seen most plainly in the establishment of its "con^reira- 

tion " as a means of educating the peoples of 
Year 1000. western Europe up to the point of making the 

great ascetic principle a force in society and in 
politics. In the eleventh century we are to see the value 
of this principle as shown in great and controlling institu- 
tions. Much has been said of the influence upon the 
Christian imagination of the approach of the year one 
thousand.-^ While the effect of that incident has un- 
doubtedly been exaggerated, it is still true that it fell in 
with ideas already deeply rooted, and thus produced certain 
effects much more striking than the mere turn of the 
century would have brought out. The idea that the world 
was to end at some time within the near future was one 
which had always, from the earliest stages of Christianity, 
been attractive to great masses of men. It rested upon the 
notion of a return of Christ to the earth, such as he was 
thought to have promised, joined with the further concep- 
tion that the Christian community was to be separated 
finally from the rest of mankind, and rewarded by the 
enjoyment of some extravagant form of blissful existence. 
After a thousand years of trial, the heavenly Jerusalem was 
to descend as in the vision of the apostle, and all Christians 
were then to enter upon their reward. Again a thousand 
years of ecstatic happiness, and the universe was to be 
utterly destroyed, the Christians to enter their final dwelling- 
place in heaven, the rest of mankind to be annihilated. 

Naturally there were those who believed that the first 
^j^g thousand years were to date from the birth of 

Millennial Christ, and who, therefore, expected some great 
n usiasm. catastrophe at the completion of this first Chris- 
tian millennium. Certainly we find in many parts of 

1 See p. 150. 



568 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

Europe indications of a restless dread of approaching 
calamity. The ascetic impulse was beginning to express 
itself in those extreme forms which had never until now 
flourished very vigorously on western soil. Especially in 
Italy we see several very remarkable cases of a new outcrop- 
ping of that form of the monastic life which had probably 
been the earliest, the form of solitary hermitage. Two men 
in particular, Nilus and Romuald, became the centres of a 
fanatical piety which reminds us rather of the oriental 
anchorites than of the clever followers of St. Benedict. 
Both of these were men of good social position, who gave 
up the world and retired into seclusion that they might . 
thereby attain the higher spiritual life. But such was the 
force of the attraction which drew the superstitious imagina- 
tion of the day towards such shining examples of saintliness 
that the very purpose of their retirement was defeated. 
Instead of passing lives of seclusion, these men, Nilus in 
the south and Romuald in the north of Italy, became active 
forces of inspiration in the hopeless task of bringing the 
Italian clergy, and with them Italian society, to more strict 
ideas of virtue and duty. Their cells became the resort of 
kings, princes and popes, whenever these leaders of public 
life wished to get the sort of spiritual aid which in that day 
seemed the only hope of the Christian world. 

Along another line the efforts of the monastic clergy and 

of those secular powers which were willing to aid it, show a 

more practical and, so far as we can judge, a 

Private more effectual aim. One of the most painful 

Warfare. ^ 

results of the rapid growth of the feudal system 

had been the maintenance of the right of private warfare. 

It had come about by the most natural process in the world. 

As the central governments had parted with their rights of 

sovereignty to the feudal nobility, they had lost all possibility 

of control over the actions of their vassals. Fidelity to the 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY. 569 

king did not imply obedience to his dictation, nor willingness 
to submit questions of difference to his decision. The idea 
of a regular centralized judicial system, such as Charlemagne 
had had in view and had, in fact, to a great degree made 
practicable, was becoming more and more a thing of the 
past. In its place had come the jurisdiction, such as it 
might be, of the lords themselves. They provided, theoret- 
ically at least, for the ordinary justice between man and 
man on their own estates, but were as far as possible from 
recognizing in practice any actual control over themselves. 
Differences between them, usually in regard to the posses- 
sion of land, could be far more agreeably and, according to 
the standards of the time, more honorably settled by open 
warfare. This practice was then supported by a theory, 
heathen in its origin, but translated into Christian forms, 
that the divine will manifested itself through military prowess, 
and that therefore the method of fighting out a legal quarrel 
was in a sense the truly religious method. 

Still, although the principles of the ancient Germanic laws 
in this regard had been reproduced in the codifications made 

under Christian influence, the church itself had 
""f^o'd^^*^^ always in its higher moments frowned upon the 

fundamental idea contained in them. Violence 
in any form was un-Christian, and it was the business of the 
church to assert the higher law of peace and good-will. So, 
even in the midst of its worldliness, there was enough of 
other-worldliness left in the church to bring about an open 
and vigorous protest. One of the most distinct results of 
the Cluny movement in France is that great effort known 
under the names of the "Peace of God" and the "Truce 
of God." That principle of association among the clerical 
centres of a country which lay at the root of the Cluny 
" congregation " made it possible for the scattered elements 
of order to unite in a common action. Beginning in the 



570 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

\ latter part of the tenth century we can trace the attempts 

of the French clergy, secular as well as regular, to declare its 

I position on this question of private warfare. The wretched- 

/ ness into which the struggles of the rival claimants for the 

throne had plunged the whole country was the most effective 

argument for any measure looking towards the abolition of 

war as a means of settling all disputes. 

So we find a series of synodal acts covering a great part 

of the French territory and dated at intervals during the 

last of the tenth and the first half of the eleventh 
Sanction 

of ciinrcli centuries. The only means of enforcing the 

ecrees. opinion of the clergy was by spiritual penalties, 

/ and the only basis for success in applying these was the 

\ belief on the part of those attacked that the consequences 

{ threatened would actually follow. This is the constant 

problem of the mediaeval church. It could enforce its 

i influence over such communities only as were already con- 

^ vinced of its right and alarmed at its thunders. It will 

/ not surprise us, therefore, that the earliest efforts of the 

) sort w^ere of little effect. The thing to do was to make a 

demonstration, the larger and more vigorous the better, and 

then trust to the growing sense of order in society at large 

to see the value of the new idea. This much at least was 

certain : if the church could not affect society in these ways 

there was no other power in sight that could do so. 

The declaration of the Peace of God meant nothing more 

nor less than that certain persons, having arms in their 

hands, bound themselves not to use them, but 

"^x^t'l^y^" to submit their differences to the iudsrment of 
of God." -" *= 

regular tribunals. But what, in the tenth cen- 
tury, was to become of a man who made this sacrifice } 
His occupation in life was gone. Fighting was his trade 
and the basis of his social standing. As well might such a 
man turn monk or clerk at once; for him there was no one 



THE TRUCE OF GOD. 571 

of the many resorts, industrial, professional or mercantile, 
which open up before the modern man. The demand not 
to fight at all was too much for mediaeval human nature. 
It is much to the credit of the church that it knew when to 
moderate its demands and changed the plan of a " Peace " 
to that of a " Truce " of God. This latter demand was that\ 
men should agree to abstain from all fighting during the 
time from Wednesday night to Monday morning of each 
week and during the most sacred festivals of the Christian 
year. Under this milder form there can be little doubt that 
the attempt to do away with violence produced some good 
results, — • how great or how lasting it is very hard to find 
out. The only hope was that the secular powers, which 
were most interested in similar ways, would lend their aid 
and add their physical penalties to the spiritual ones of the 
church. The suppression of private warfare was quite as 
much in the interest of the royal cause everywhere as in 
that of the lower classes more directly protected by it. The 
papacy, too, with its universal aims and its claim to a divine 
commission as the defender of the oppressed, was directly 
interested in enforcing the effort of the local clergy toward 
a more decent condition of society. The final stage of the 
Truce of God, therefore, was reached when it passed out 
of the condition of a mere agreement among the parties most 
likely to offend and took on the character of a public law, 
proclaimed formally by the kings of France and Germany, 
by the latter as emperor, and by the papacy as a definite 
article of canon law as well. Under this form, it remained 
at least as a recognized principle until nearly the time when 
the rising national powers were in condition to secure the 
same end by other means. It should be added that when a 
Gottesfrieden received the formal support of a temporal power, 
it comes so near to the character of a Landfrieden that the 
distinction in the two ideas mav for the moment disappear. 



572 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

Coming now. to the internal organization of the monas- 
tery as a social, political and economic unit, we have to 

notice first that the foundation of a religious 
Foundation , . ., 

of a house was due primarily to motives of piety on 

Mediaeval t^g p;^!-^ of some layman. It was senerallv an 
Monastery. . ^ . t> j 

investment entered into as other good invest- 
ments are for the sake of a well-defined benefit. In the 
early charters it is generally specified that the donor gives 
such and such lands, forests, incomes or what not, in return 
for which the brothers bind themselves to pray forever for 
the repose of his soul. Lands conveyed in this way were 
often of little immediate value, and their development and 
increase by every device of practical management became 
one of the primary functions of the order. Naturally many 
an heir to a great estate felt himself defrauded of his rights 
by such alienations, and the records of monasteries are full 
of protests, usually ineffectual, against them. This arrange- 
ment was a kind of insurance of the soul, but we have also 
abundant evidence that the monastery was often thought of 
as a life-insurance institution, not unlike in purpose many of 
those in our own time. The donor of money sometimes 
made the stipulation that he should at his request be 
received into the monastery at any time and so provided for 
during the rest of his life. 

The administration of the monastery was vested primarily 
in the hands of the abbot or father, in whose hands lay, 

theoretically, complete control over all the man- 
The Admin- 
istration agement of the house. The vow of obedience 

of the ^vas made to him, and without his consent the 

Monastery. ... 

individual monk could not properly perform any 

act of life. It was his duty to see that the monks observed 

the rule in all its details, and to punish infractions of it at 

his discretion. He was the responsible manager of the 

temporal property of the community, must see that its 



ADMINISTRATION OF A MONASTERY. 573 

accounts were properly kept and must be in readiness at 
specified times to render an account of his stewardship to 
the community as a whole. He occupies in the feudal 
hierarchy the same rank held by the bishop ; he is the 
responsible person for the performance of the feudal dues 
to the overlord and stands for the monastery in all its 
efforts to keep the feudal hold upon its vassal tenants. It 
was as important to the monastery as it was to the bishopric 
that its head should be chosen freely^ without the use of any 
of the lower motives which were almost certain to affect the 
choice. The electors are the monks, but, since the abbot is 
regularly to be confirmed both by the secular head of the 
territory and by the bishop of the diocese, it is clear that 
these larger interests would have to be considered, and in 
the case of the more important monasteries we find the 
same difficulties in getting " pure " elections that we have 
spoken of in connection with episcopal elections. The 
succession in a great monastery was often the occasion of 
violent conflicts between the complicated interests at stake. 
Immediately under the abbot, a sort of vice-abbot in fact, 
comes the prior, whose business it is to carry out the 
The Inferior ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ abbot and to represent him in his 
Monastic absence. The same officer appears under the 
name of decanus or still oftener pracpositus (the 
German Probst). He became often a troublesome rival 
of the abbot and was, as many records show, the kind 
of man often selected to fill a vacant bishopric. The cham- 
berlain icamerarius) has charge of the money, the clothing 
and the archives. The cellarer (cellararius) looks after the 
provision, both food and drink. The sacristan is charged 
with the most precious possessions of the house, the vessels 
of the service, the sacerdotal ornaments and the relics with 
their costly enclosures. The librarian {pibliothecarius) has 
the duty of keeping the books and supervising the manu- 



574 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

facture of new ones, an important part of the function of a 
well-regulated monastery. The almoner sees to the dis- 
tribution of goods to the poor, usually in fulfillment of pious 
endowments entrusted to the monastery for this purpose. 
The mjtrmarius takes charge of the sick, both monks 
and outsiders, for the monastery was also a hospital for the 
immediate region about. The hospitaller looks after the 
guests who have a claim upon the hospitality of the house. 
All these officials are^ themselves monks and are subject 
to the rule. Besides these there was a multitude of other 

persons, partly laymen and partly secular clergy- 
OfScers^^^ ^^ men, called in to perform a great variety of duties 

not primarily belonging to the monastic life. 
The cure of souls within the monastery was originally in 
the hands of secular clergymen specially maintained for that 
purpose, but in course of time monks were so far exempted 
from the strict rule that they might perform this function 
also. Menial service was largely done by lay servants and, 
most important of all, there was regularly some layman of 
high standing who, under the name of vicarius, advocatus 
(^Vogt) or some similar term, represented the abbey in its 
dealing with the outside world. Such a place as this last 
was a very fat berth indeed, offering an infinite opportunity 
for pickings and stealings in every direction. The advocate 
of a large monastery, especially if, as was often the case, 
he held the advocacy of several houses at once, tried 
naturally to make his office hereditary, like every other 
valuable thing, and there are numerous records of conflict 
arising on this issue. The advocacy of the Frauenmiinster 
at Zurich by the Habsburg family was the entering wedge 
for their claims over the Forest Cantons which finally 
resulted in the formation of the Swiss Confederation. 

The body of the occupants of a typical large abbey 
consisted of several classes of persons. First, of course, 



7'HE MONASTIC CLERGY. 575 

the monks in full title, who have passed their novitiate and 

have entered upon all the rights and privileges of the order. 

Some of these remain within the walls, others 
The Several ^ . ^ . . , , 

Classes of ^^^ sent out mto service m the lesser houses 

the Monastic dependent upon the main abbey. They form 

together the " chapter," which meets regularly to 

receive the instructions of the abbot and to confirm such 

acts as need their approval. They are the electoral body, 

through whose action alone the abbot ought to be chosen. 

The novices form a class by themselves. They are young 

persons not yet admitted into the regular monastic life and 

as yet undecided whether they are suited for it. The 

novitiate might last one or two years and at the end of this 

probation the novice became a monk in full title or left the 

monastery. A third class were the fratres co7iversi, that is 

lay-brothers, subject only in part to the rule and held in 

connection with the monastery for the performance of 

numerous secular functions. The oblati were either laymen 

who maintained a certain relation to the monastery by 

putting money into it as an investment, or they were children 

placed by their parents in charge of the monks and then 

later claimed as bound by the vows of the parent. The 

right of the monastery over these young oblati was frequently 

the cause of bitter personal conflicts, but, as the prestige of 

the orders grew, their hold upon their members strengthened, 

and in the majority of cases the oblati were willing enough 

to keep on with the life that had grown familiar to them. 

The immense increase in the ascetic spirit during the 

eleventh and twelfth centuries led to a corresponding growth 

of the monastic institution. It became the 
The Growth , , , r , • 

of Orders regular custom for larger and older foundations 

and Congre- ^o send out members to establish new centres of 
gations. ..... 

monastic life in regions not yet so provided, or 

such a parent-house might bring into its control smaller 



576 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

foundations already established. Such minor establish- 
ments came to be known as priories. They were generally 
put in the hands of a prior trained in the central house and 
remaining, in his new position, still subject, in theory at 
least, to the abbot. The relation may not inaptly be com- 
pared to that existing among the members of the lay 
hierarchy. Like the various stages of feudal holders, the 
several ranks of monastic organizations found themselves 
involved in frequent conflicts, the central power trying in 
each case to maintain its hold over the members, while 
these on their side were taking advantage of every oppor- 
tunity to strengthen themselves in their independence. The 
relation varied very greatly from that of simple subjection 
to that of almost complete independence. In some cases, 
as for instance in the Congregation of Cluny, there was a 
gradual progress from the idea of association to that of 
control. In other cases, as in the Cistercian and in the 
later mendicant orders, the theory of a central administra- 
tion was the starting point of the movement. 

The history of mediaeval monasticism is, we have said, 
one of continually repeated reforms. In principle the rule 
of St. Benedict remained unchanged ; all the various 
attempts at an enforcement of the monastic idea were 

nothing more than so many revivals of that rule. 
New Orders ^„ - , i • t ^ i 

on the ' ^^ names of the new orders mdicate only 

Benedictine certain slight variations, always in the direction 
of greater severity. Properly speaking the Con- 
gregation of Cluny is not to be classed as an order. One 
cannot speak of a Cluniac monk as one would of a Cister- 
cian, a Carthusian or a Carmelite. Yet practically there is 
no difference in the result. During the eleventh century 
and well into the twelfth Cluny dominated the religious 
world. By its capture of the papacy it secured to itself 
unlimited support in its policy of unification. The papacy 



THE MONASTIC CLERGY.— ORDERS. 577 

had come to see that its best hold upon society was through 
just such a strongly organized monastic machine as this. 
But success brought with it the germs of failure. In the 
midst of the best activities of St. Bernard, in the first half 
of the twelfth century, we begin to find Cluny falling into 
the inevitable sin of all monasteries, luxury and contempt 
for the very principle of self-abnegation by which it had 
grown strong. The general conventions of the order show 
us plainly the details of this falling-off. Complaints were 
piled upon complaints, but Cluny, intrenched behind its 
boundless privileges, could afford to neglect them and 
consequently from that time on sank steadily in prestige. 
It remained as a vast rich corporation with its houses 
scattered all over the soil of France and England. The 
Maison de Chmy at Paris, now converted into a museum of 
antiquities, remains to show the splendor of its outward 
equipment. 

Meanwhile a new impulse had begun to make itself felt, 
also upon French soil, so fertile at this time in intellectual 
energy of every sort. While the Cluniac houses 
Citeanx^ ° had been chiefly in the cities, the new founda- 
tions of Citeaux were by preference made in the 
depths of solitary wildernesses. The original Benedictine 
fervor was displayed anew and men rushed into the order 
with incredible eagerness. The same course is followed 
again. The old system resists, but, under the lead of St. 
Bernard, the order of Citeaux in its turn captures the papacy 
and applies it to its own ends. In the thirteenth century a 
similar series of general chapters denounces the sins and 
corruptions into which it had fallen, and again a new 
impulse is needed to revive the flagging zeal of the ascetic 
spirit. 

This impulse was found in an enterprise which marks a 
distinctly new departure. Down to the thirteenth century 



578 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

no essentially new element had been introduced into the 

orders ; with the Mendicants there comes in a spirit which 

we may already begin to call modern in the ant- 
Tlie Founda- •; . , . ^ , ^ 

tion of the i^^ss ot its adjustment to the practical need of 

Mendicant the time. The source of all evils in the monas- 
Orders. . . . 

teries, which, in spite of immense services ren- 
dered, the authorities of the church had never been able to 
overlook, was the strict separation of the monastic commu- 
nity from the active life of the world and its consequent 
irresponsibility. It had proved to be more than human 
nature could bear, to be thus set free from all obligations to 
society except such as men's own consciences provided. 
The new problem was how to maintain the sanctity of the 
monastic character and yet to bring the monk into closer 
relations with the life about him. The solution seemed to 
be found by emphasizing as never before the vow of personal 
poverty and extending it to the order itself, so that there 
should be no resource for the individual monk but actually 
begging his bread from door to door. Furthermore the new 
orders were to have distinct and separate functions as 
reforming agents in the active life of the day. Almost at 
the same moment, in the early years of the thirteenth 
century, in Italy and in Spain appeared the first movements 
of the new inspiration. St. Francis of Assisi and St. 
Dominic were both young men of good family, who were 
called into activity by what seemed to them the wretched- 
ness of the world about them. The purpose of the old 
monasticism had been primarily selfish, its main object the 
good of the soul of the monk ; the impulse of the new 
monasticism was in the most pronounced form a missionary 
one. The ambition of Dominic was to restore the purity of 
the faith already endangered by the rise of heretical thought; 
the aim of Francis was to kindle anew the flame of personal 
religious fervor and to spread it as widely as possible. 



THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 579 

The Dominican order {Fratres praedicatores) assumed 

from the beginning the function of doctrinal preaching and 

teaching. They became the leaders in the great 

The work of combating all those forms of religious 

Dominican 1 • i • i , ° 

Order. speculation which at the beginning of the thir- 

teenth century were threatening both the doctrine 
and the organization of the established church. Their first 
efforts were directed against unbelievers, that is Jews and 
Arabs, but still more effective was their work against every 
kind of divergence within Christianity itself. When, during 
the attack upon the French Albigensians, it came to the 
point of establishing a special force for the purpose of 
hunting out heresy and bringing it to trial and punishment, 
it was the Dominicans who offered themselves for this 
service, and so long as the Inquisition was maintained this 
order furnished its most violent and its most successful 

leaders. The work of the Franciscans was early *■ 

P^ . turned rather in the direction of studvinpf the 

Franciscan j a 

Order. profounder problems of Christian thought and 

of influencing the masses of the people. Ecstatic 
piety, formerly turning itself into self-contemplation and 
seclusion, now found expression in works of charity and in 
devotion to the interests of society. The figure of St. V 
Francis, glorified by a rapidly growing legend, became ^ 
hardly second to that of Jesus in the enthusiasm of the 
faithful. The order of St. Clara, estabHshed immedi- 
ately after that of the Franciscans, opened to women 
an opportunity hitherto denied them to take their place 
in the great work of reforming the social life of Christian 
Europe. The adoption of a lay membership enormously 
increased the influence of the new order. Within two 
generations we find the chief lights of the scholastic 
learning enrolled either among the Franciscans or the 
Dominicans. 



580 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

The first applications of the two leaders for recognition 

by the papacy had not been warmly received. The work 

they proposed to do was properly the function of 

The Papacy \\^q^ episcopal clergy, and to sanction them seemed 

and tlie 

Mendicants, to be to confess that this function was not being 

properly performed. Resistance from the organ- 
ized clergy was to be anticipated; but the papacy here, as 
so often before, was clever enough to see that in this new 
impulse it might secure a weapon against all forms of 
resistance, and after its first hesitation it gave itself to the- 
advancement of the. Mendicants as it had given itself before 
to that of Cluny and Citeaux. There was no limit to the 
privileges that were showered upon them. The functions of 
the secular clergy, the administration of the sacraments and 
the right of preaching were given to them without stint, so 
that wherever they went they constituted so many interlopers 
in the regular and ordinary working of the parish life. 
Their character as exceptional persons appealed powerfully 
to the mediaeval imagination. Their self-denial was a 
reproach to the priest and the cloistered monk who were 
living in wealth and ease, while these bare-footed and 
roughly-dressed pilgrims were demonstrating in their own 
person the hard things they preached to others. Eventually 
the Mendicants in their turn fell victims to the same tempta- 
tions that had ruined the earlier orders, but within our 
period they were unquestionably an immense power for good 
of the mediaeval kind. 

As to the organization and discipline of the Mendicant 
orders they differed from most of the others in having from 

. ,. the start a principle of unity. Each had its 
Organization r r ^ 

oftheMendi- head, a master or general, residing at Rome, 
cant Orders, ^j-ought thus into close relation with the papacy, 
and exercising a strict supervision over the whole order. 
All Europe was parceled out into provinces, within each of 



THE MENDICANT ORDERS. 581 

which a provincial assembly elected a provincial prior and 
sent its representatives to a general assembly, which elected 
the general. Although forbidden to receive gifts beyond 
the necessities of life, this prohibition was evaded under 
every kind of pretense. The Mendicant houses were estab- 
lished in every city and endowed with vast sums, which were 
supposed to be applied in the missionary undertakings of 
the orders. Exempted by special enactment from every 
species of jurisdiction, the "friar" wandered in and out 
through the complex mediaeval society, admired or dreaded, 
petted or persecuted, the most powerful person of his age. 
In spite of its strictly centralized organization, the founda- 
tion principle of the mendicant orders was that of an elective 
democracy. Its numbers were recruited from every rank 
of society ; its only test of value was that of practical use- 
fulness. The freedom of the Mendicant from all ties made 
him an especially useful person to all rulers, who, like 
Louis IX in France, were struggling against the trammels of 
the feudal and the ecclesiastical systems. At the close of 
our period the most learned scholars, the most influential 
counselors, the greatest preachers, and even the most promi- 
nent members of the episcopal hierarchy had been trained 
in this most effective school. At the beginning of the next 
period, when the papacy was beginning to feel the first 
shocks of the protest which was to bring on the Reforma- 
tion, it was a branch of the Franciscan order that led the 
attack against Rome. The mendicants are far more prop- 
erly to be compared with the later Jesuits than with any 
order which had preceded them. 



S82 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

C. The Canon Law. 

The term " Canon-Law," or, better, " Church-Law," 

includes all those regulations, either expressed or implied, 

, . by which the church, as a whole, and the mem- 
Foundations -^ ' 

of the bers of the clerical body as individuals, regu- 

Clitircli-Law. \^^^^ their numerous and complicated interests. 
If we consider the subject in its strictly legal aspect we 
have first to inquire into' the source from which the legal 
rights of the church and its members were derived. The 
church exists within human society, and it must, therefore, 
accept, in a greater or less degree, the same controlling 
authority which is acknowledged by other human interests, 
namely, the state. Whatever rights the church has within 
its own limits it can have only in so far as it is permitted to 
do so by the state, and the extent to which it may go in this 
matter depends upon the regard for it which the given state 
may show at a given time. The church, as a corporation 
within the framework of the state, may, like other corpora- 
tions, make its own by-laws, and enforce them by penalties 
relating purely to itself, as, for instance, by denial of mem- 
bership, or by refusing to give the offending member some 
of its peculiar privileges. Such freedom may be given to 
any organization of men, so long as it confines itself to 
amicable settlements of its affairs, and does not try to apply 
force to its members, or diminish any of those rights which 
it is the special duty of the state to protect. For instance, 
if the members of the order of Freemasons in any of our 
states should agree to submit all their differences to the 
arbitration of their own officers, and to abide by their deci- 
sions, the state could have no objection. It would rather 
welcome such an addition to the forces of law and order ; 
but if, in carrying out such decisions, the officers of the 
Freemasons should attempt any violence against the person 



THE CANON LA W. 583 

of a citizen, he would still have a right to the protection of 
the state. The state would not recognize the decisions of 
the Freemasons' court ; it would simply ignore them so long 
as they did not interfere with its peculiar functions. 

Precisely similar was the position of the early church 
within the Roman Empire. So long as the state did not 
Earliest admit the right of the church to exist, it could 

Forms of not, of course, sanction in any way the acts of 
Church-Law. -^^ leaders. It simply left the Christians to 
themselves when it did not persecute them, and thus con- 
tributed indirectly to the growth of a feeling that the only 
proper tribunal for Christians was that of their own officers. 
They did not refuse to obey the law, except when it required 
them to do something against their conscience, but the very 
idea of the heathen empire was an offense to them, and 
they profited by the public contempt to develop within 
themselves ideas of church government, which quietly bided 
their time. The time came when, under Constantine and 
his successors, the empire became Christian. Then, with 
the recognition of the corporation of Christians, came the 
necessity of defining the relations of the state to the church. 
This recognition itself may properly be regarded as the first 
step in the process of making a church-law ; it provided a 
sanction that had until then been wanting. By a hundred 
years from the death of Constantine it had come to be a 
question whether the sanction was to be given by the state 
to the church, or by the church to the state. The church 
was no longer a corporation within the state, but it had 
become identical with the citizenship of the empire. As 
time went on this became still more clearly the case. But 
now a new distinction made itself felt, and partly removed 
the difficulty. The church came to be more and more iden- 
tified with the clergy. Rights and privileges which had 
originally been granted to Christians, as such, were now 



584 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

given to the clergy as if they, and they alone, were the 
church. It is under this form that in the Middle Ages we 
have to understand the term church-law. It is the law of 
the corporation of the clergy. It concerns itself with defin- 
ing who the clergy are, their various orders and functions, 
and then with regulating their rights among themselves, and 
in regard to the other parts of the body politic and social. 
If we ask ourselves what is the source of canon-law we 
shall have different answers according to the different times 
Sources of ^^ ^^^ considering. At first the source was dis- 
tlie Canon- tinctly the imperial government. The Roman 
^^* emperor was the head of the church as he was 

the head of the state. The councils, which were the organs 
of the church, were called by him and their decrees were 
valid only as he confirmed them. They were published by 
imperial order and formed a part of imperial as well as of 
ecclesiastical law. This state of things remained theoreti- 
cally true in the East as long as there was a Byzantine 
empire ; but in fact the action of the state was constantly 
dictated by the will of the church. In the western world 
the same causes contributed to the growth of an inde- 
pendent body of church-law, which were working in the 
direction of a compact and well-organized administration 
of church affairs in general. The neglect of Italy by the 
eastern emperors gave to the papacy its great opportunity, 
and it improved it by making good, at every point, its claim 
to be the sole arbiter in religious matters. All that we have 
said of the development of the papal power comes in here 
to illustrate the progress of the legal side of church life. 

This claim of the papacy was not made good without 
resistance. The theory of the Merovingian kings of the 
Franks, for instance, that they were the successors of the 
western Roman emperors, revived the notion that the source 
of Frankish church-law was the state. This national idea 



THE CANON LAW. 585 

was never quite lost sight of. The council, national or 

provincial, continued to be the organ of expression for the 

church's ideas of law, but the question was what 
Authorities i i i ■ i • 

in Rivalry power should give to this expression the final 

with the sanction it needed in order to become bind- 
Papacy. 

mg. Then again there was the theory of the 

independent right of the national or provincial church to 
legislate for itself without any higher sanction, and between 
these three ideas, the papal, the royal and the local eccle- 
siastical sanction, it would be a bold man indeed who should 
venture to say, at a given moment, precisely where the real 
power which gave force to church-law existed. We have 
still further to remember that we are in a period in which 
the idea of the sanctity of law, in all its forms, was weak. 
The formal enactments in the field of church-law are, 
therefore, far from giving us the assurance that men were 
guided in practice by the principles thus laid down. The 
great value of such enactments was that they gave to 
the parties in a dispute a something to which they could 
appeal, even though one party were little inclined to act in 
accordance with them. The most interesting aspect of 
church-law in the Middle Ages is, that while other legal 
relations were determined almost wholly by custom, without 
much of any actual legislation, we have here a continuous 
record of legal experiments made with the definite purpose 
of meeting certain well-defined evils. In short, it is hardly 
too much to say that the only legislation of a modern or 
creative sort, throughout our whole period, is that of the 
church. It was the only institution that knew just what it 
wanted, and took perfectly definite and well considered 
steps to get it. 

The earliest codifications of church-law have already been 
mentioned in connection with the Isidorian Decretals. Thev 
all belong in the period before ours ; in the present period 



586 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

there is no question, at all events after the Isidorian forgeries, 
that in theory the papal supremacy is the key-note of all 
Yj^g ecclesiastical law. Other sources are to be found. 

Mediaeval but all these may be referred to the papacy as a 

incip e. f^i^al tribunal, and are, by some fiction or other, 
made to derive their authority from it. All Christendom is 
to be thought of as one state with a uniform system of ad- 
ministration, over wdiich the pope presides. All local and 
provincial interests, clerical as well as political, have their 
justification only in so far as they acknowledge this supreme 
leadership. The outward consequences of this conflict have 
been sufficiently described in the chapter on the wars of the 
Investiture. 

After the time of Pseudo-Isidore, we have several partial 

attempts to codify the existing church-law, but none that can 

be called complete until nearly the middle of the 
The ^ 

"Decretum twelfth century, when, doubtless as a conse- 

Gratiani." quence of the revived interest in leo-al studies, 

II39. . 

a Bolognese monk named Gratian, teacher of 
canon-law at the university, published his famous Decretum. 
This was an attempt to put into a compact form the whole 
body of church-law as it rested upon the decretal system. 
Gratian's own name for the book was " Concorda7itia discor- 
da7itium caJionmn^'''' "the reconciliation of canons which (seem 
to) disagree." This name characterizes the value of the 
work. Its object is to present a complete system, and 
Gratian 's own comments, which accompany the text of the 
decretals, were planned to have the same tendency. The 
Decretiwi was revised in the sixteenth century, after the 
Council of Trent, to bring it up to date, but in our own day 
it has again been cleared of all changes and published by a 
Protestant scholar in its original form. Almost precisely a 
hundred years after the publication of Gratian, appeared the 
so-called Liber Extra of Pope Gregory IX, and this was 



THE CANON LAW. 587 

followed by a series of other compilations, all containing 

papal decrees intended to complete the work of Gratian. 

These all, together with the Decretiwi^ constitute 

the Coi^pus Juris Cano?iici, technically so-called, 

but they bring the subject down no farther than the year 

13 13, with a few additions from a later time called extrava- 

gaiites. Since then the sources of canon-law have been the 

recorded acts of authoritative councils and the decrees of 

popes, as before, but these have never as yet been collected 

into one publication. 

The ecclesiastical court based its right to act upon one 

of two principles : it claimed jurisdiction either on account 

^^^ of the persons or of the subjects involved. The 
Scope of the ^ -^ 

Ecclesiastical first consideration gave it the cognizance of all 
Jurisdiction. ^^^^^ ^q which a clergyman was a party. The 
second brought before it all matters in which a religious 
element could be found. Now in our period it was impossi- 
ble to find any subject which could not, by some twist or 
other, be called religious. One has only to consider the 
extravagant claims of the Hildebrandine papacy to see that 
pretty much every event of human life could be thought of 
as involving religious ideas. The most important chapter 
of church-law is that relating to marriage. Since marriage 
was a sacramental act and could, therefore, properly be 
celebrated only by a priest, the act itself and all the very 
complicated interests resulting from it were taken into the 
scope of the clerical jurisdiction. It was the business of 
canon-law to tell what was a legal marriage, and it seemed 
to be the interest of the church to multiply the chances of 
an illegal marriage in every way, by restricting the kinds of 
persons who might lawfully marry. From these efforts it 
resulted that the church determined the question of the 
legitimacy of children, and in this was involved the question 
of their rights of inheritance. An oath was a religious act ; 



5SS THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

therefore all questions involving an oath were proper sub- 
jects of canon-law. The protection of the feeble was a 
primary duty of religion ; therefore all cases relating to 
widows, orphans, paupers and other defenseless persons, 
might come into the clerical court. The same idea is seen 
in the claim over cases of wills, since the execution of a will 
was a matter of the conscience, and this was especially the 
case if the property willed were to be applied ad piajn 
caiisam. Further we find in the ecclesiastical court cases 
of betrothal, of fulfillment of vows, of church benefices, of 
rights of patronage, tithes, all cases involving church prop- 
erty in any way, in short, every conceivable kind of case in 
which the clerical or church element could, by any process 
whatever, be made apparent. 

The criminal jurisdiction of the church extended primarily 
over its own members, and this not without resistance from 

^ . . , the state authorities. With time, however, it 
Criminal ' ' 

Jurisdiction extended itself over laymen also, on grounds 
e c urc . gii^^ji^^ ^-q those we have seen deciding the limits 
in regard to civil cases. The church claimed the right to 
punish offenses which, by any reasoning whatever, seemed 
to involve its peculiar interests. Its penalties were, in 
theory, all spiritual, involving the loss of more or less reli- 
gious privilege. The chief of these was the 

Excommuni- gxcommunication, the lesser or the s^reater ac- 
cation. ' ^ 

cording to circumstances. The former shut a 
man out from a certain part of the sacramental functions ; 
the latter cut him off completely from all Christian fellow- 
ship and made him practically an outlaw on the face o-i the 
earth. The secular government was supposed to support 
the clerical arm by making failure to remove the excom- 
munication by absolution within a certain time, ground also 
for the civil ban, by which a man was declared outside the 
protection of all civil law. The excommunication might be 



THE CANON LAW. 589 

pronounced by a bishop within his own diocese or by the 
pope anywhere. An extension of the excommunication 
from individuals to all the inhabitants of a given district 
was called the " interdict." It consisted in the 
suspension of all spiritual functions within the 
district, and, in an age when the due performance of these 
functions was regarded as essential to the very existence of 
the Christian man, it was the most effective means of 
coercion that could be thought of. Its very extreme char- 
acter, however, made it intolerable and it was very seldom 
carried out in its entirety. The most effective minor pun- 
ishments against laymen were in the shape of fines, admin- 
istered in fulfillment of the sacrament of penance. To the 
point of a death sentence the church, by virtue of its spiritual 
character, was never allowed to go. Over clergymen them- 
selves the disciplinary action ol the church 
th ci ^ ° tribunals was very complete. The guilty clerk 
could be suspended from the functions of his 
office, without losing the clerical character, or for graver 
offenses he might be deposed, in which case he lost his 
immunity as a priest and might be handed over to the 
secular judge for sentence. For small offenses the discipline 
of the Middle Ages was very prompt with flogging, imprison- 
ment, immuring in a monastery or other mild punishment. 
As regarded one line of offenses there was never any 
question as to the forum : namely, all such as had reference 
to the dogma of the church. Belief was in the 
against Middle Ages not a matter of choice, or of con- 

Doctrine, viction, but of duty. The individual had no 
rights in the matter, but must submit himself without ques- 
tion to the dictation of the church. These offenses were 
grouped under three names "heresy," or a divergence in a 
matter of faith, "schism," which involved a separation from 
the established church and the foundation of a new associa- 



590 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

tion, and "apostasy," which was a denial of Christianity 
itself. Closely related to these was the crime of " simony," 
the purchase of any ecclesiastical good for a temporal price. 
Another line of cases, although primarily involving clerical 
interests, were treated as partly subject to state control 
{fori mixti), as, for instance, adultery, sacrilege, magic, 
blasphemy, perjury, usury, etc. 

The usual organ of the clerical court was the bishop, but, 
from the earliest times, he was required to act in conjunction 

Organization ^^'^^^^ °^^^^ clergymen, just as the presiding judge 
oftheEcciesi-in civil cases was always aided by lay assessors. 
astical Court, rp, .... ... 

ihe process, especially m crmimal cases, was m 

some respects peculiar, though influenced in every period 
and among all races by the prevailing legal customs. The 
earliest theory was that the Christian conscious of another's 
guilt would counsel him in private, and only upon his per- 
sistence in wrong-doing, would accuse him before the tri- 
bunal. As the ideas of church-law grew more definite and 
limited themselves primarily to the clergy, a stricter process, 
modeled on that of the Roman courts, came in. Under the 
influence of Germanic ideas of law, it was the custom for 
the accused clergyman to purify himself of the charge by an 
oath, but with time, even in the northern countries, this form 
of process was driven out by the Roman, and the notion of 
evidence was substituted for that of the oath. Towards the 
close of our period, under Innocent III, the whole matter 
was revised and placed more distinctly on a Roman basis. 
Besides all former methods of getting at the guilt of the 
accused, the process by "denunciation" was 
toriai Process ^^^ recognized, and thus the way was prepared 
' for the culmination of the whole system of cleri- 

cal jurisdiction in the powerful and terrible tribunal o£ the 
Inquisition. The essence of the inquisitorial process is 
V that the judge is required to search out the criminal, not to 



THE CANON LAW. 591 

wait for an accusation, but to act upon common report or 
denunciation by an individual. Thus the court became not 
a mere judicial body, but in a sense it was also a party 
interested in conviction. The theory that heresy was a 
crime, once adopted, led naturally to the further theory that 
no means for the detection and punishment of so terrible a 
sin could be too extreme. The vigor of the Inquisition was 
increased in proportion as the light of free thought began to 
make its influence felt upon the acceptance of the church 
system. Within our period it remained limited chiefly to 
certain specific cases of heretical depravity {Jiaeretica p?'avi- 
tas), as for instance the Albigensian movement in the south 
of France. Its greatest activity and its eternal infamy be- 
long in the following, the period of the Reformation. 

From this enumeration of the functions of the ecclesiasti- 
cal courts, it is clear that the public courts must have found 

^ themselves seriously hampered in their action. 
Resistance of ... 

the Public The clerical jurisdiction had grown up by their 

Courts. g-^g ^^^ formed a competing power against 

which they could not successfully contend. The result was 
that, long before the end of our period, we begin to see 
signs of impatience. The earliest direct action against the 
ecclesiastical courts is in England, in the famous " Consti- 
tutions of Clarendon " of the year 1164. These provided 
that the king should define the limits of ecclesiastical juris- 
diction, that the trial of a criminal clerk should be initiated 
in the king's court, and that no appeals should be made to 
Rome without the royal permission. This protest was 
an incident in the larger struggle between the king and 
the clerical party, and shared the fortunes of that struggle. 
In other countries it appears in similar forms. It was a 
leading feature of the political reforms of the emperor 
Frederic II in his kingdom of Sicily and of Louis IX in his 
similar reforms in France. In all these protests, however, 



592 THE ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEM. 

the principle of the ecclesiastical courts was not seriously 
questioned ; the point was that they should confine them- 
selves to the subjects which properly belonged to them and 
that the decision as to what these subjects were must rest 
with the state. The most effectual argument against the 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction was found in the theory, just com- 
ing into notice at the close of our period, that the state too 
was a divine institution, and the head of the state therefore 
the only true fountain of all justice. 



INDEX, 



Abbot, 572. 

Abelard, Peter, French scholastic, 

453-455; 459-460. 
Adalbero, archbishop of Rlieims, 

155- 

Adalbert, missionary to the Prus- 
sians, 155; patron, saint of Po- 
land, translated to Prague, 189. 

Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen, 
papal candidate, 203 ; co-regent 
for Flenry IV, 236 ; 241. 

Adalbert of Ivrea, son of Ber en- 
gar II, co-regent of Italy, 127. 

Adalhard, counsellor of Charle- 
magne, 16. 

Adelaide of Burgundy, marries 
Lothair of Italy, 1 26 ; widowed, 
marrie^s Otto I, 129; in charge 
of Otto III, 151. 

Advocatus (Vogt), 574. 

Agapitus II, pope, 128, 129. 

Agnes of Meran, wife of Philip 
Augustus, 328-329. 

Agnes of Poitiers, queen of Henry 
III, 193 ; empress, 203 ; regent 
for Henry IV, 233 ; overthrown, 

235- 
Alberic of Spoleto and Camerino, 

119-121. 
Alberic II, son of Marozia, revolts 

against king Hugo, 124; Priii- 

ceps et Senatoj', 125; defends 



Rome against Hugo, 126 ; 
against Otto I, 129 ; death, 135. 

Albert (the Bear), markgraf of 
Brandenburg, made duke of 
Saxony, 2S0 ; loses title, but 
keeps much Saxon land, 282. 

Albert the Great, Dominican 
scholar, 463. 

Albigenses, doctrine, 335-336; cru- 
sade, 338-342. 

Alcuin, 438. 

Alexander II, pope, 233 ; rejected 
by German synod at Basel, 234. 

Alexander III, pope, chief oppo- 
nent of Frederic I, 300-312. 

Alexander of Hales, Franciscan 
scholar, 463. 

Alexandria, built, 304 ; besieged, 

305- 

Alexius Comnenus, Greek em- 
peror, 363-364. 

Alexius III, Greek emperor, 3S1. 

Altheim, Synod of, 101. 

Anacletus, anti-pope, 278. 

Anastasius, imperial anti-pope, 62. 

Angevine territories, described, 
404. 

Angilbert, Frankish poet, 439. 

Anselm of Canterbury, 451, 452. 

Antioch, taken in first crusade, 
364 ; under Boemund, 365 ; 
principality of, 367. 



594 



INDEX. 



Aquitaine, described, 401. 

Arabs, attack Rome, defeated at 
Ostia, 61 ; at the Cape of Circe, 
86; on the Garigliano, 119. 

Archbishop, 553-555. 

Archdeacon, 553. 

Archpresbyter, 553. 

Arduin of Ivrea, Italian pretender, 
172. 

Aribo, archbishop of Milan, heads 
conspiracy against Conrad II, 
183-184. 

Arnold of lirescia, 293-297 ; rela- 
tions with Abelard, 454-456. 

Arnulf of Carinthia, elected king 
of the Germans, 36, 90 ; defeats 
Norsemen, 90 ; breaks up Mo- 
ravian duchy, 91 ; in vSaxony, 
92 ; makes Lorraine independ- 
ent, 92 ; crowned Emperor, 93 ; 
treats with Hungarians, 94. 

Arnulf, duke of Bavaria, 112. 

Arnulf, bishop of Orleans, 152. 

Arsenius, papal legate to Frank- 
land, 72. 

Assizes of Jerusalem, 371. 

Austria (Bavarian Ostmark), be- 
ginnings, 148; favored by Ho- 
henstaufen, 280. 

Babenberg (Bamberg) family, in 
Austria, 147. 

Bailli, royal official in France, 427- 
429. 

Baptism, 544. 

Bavaria, under the house of Luit- 
pold, 95-96 ; diminished by 
Otto II, 147 ; under Guelfs, 
276 fE.; diminished by Hohen- 
staufen, 2S0 ff.; under Otto of 
Wittelsbach (diminished), 310. 



Beatrice of Tuscany, marries God- 
frey of Lorraine, 192, 215; de- 
voted to papacy, 229. 

Beaumanoir, French jurist, 496. 
•Benedict of Aniane, monastic re- 
former, 443; 558-560. 

Benedict III, pope of the 
" Romans," 62. 

Benedict VIII, pope, 165; at- 
tempts at church reform, 168- 
170, 199. 

Benedict IX, pope at ten years, 
185 ; sells the papacy, 200 ; 
claims it again, 200 ; deposed, 
202. 

Benedict X, Tusculan anti-pope, 
216. 

Berengar of Friuli, king of Italy, 
37, 119, 121, 122. 

Berengar II of Ivrea, 126; under 
German protection, 127 ; king; 
of Italy, 127 ; tries to be inde- 
pendent, 136; suppressed by 
Otto I, 139. 

Berengar of Tours, heretic on 
Transubstantiation, 446-449. 

Bernard, St., preaches the second 
crusade, 375 ; against Abelard, 
458-461. 

Bernhard, grandson of Charle 
magne, king in Italy, 13; oath 
of vassalage, 1 6 ; revolt and 
death, 21. 

Bishop, as an ecclesiastical person, 
546-548; and chapter 549-550. 

Boemund, Norman crusader, 363 ; 
prince of Antioch, 365. 

Bohemia, rising to power, 186 , 
subdued by Henry III, 189-19C 

Boleslav, duke of Poland, 1 56; kin 
in revolt against Germany, 17. 



INDEX. 



595 



■ onaventura, Franciscan scholar, 

464. 
Boniface, markgraf of Tuscany, 

192. 
ooso, count of Vienne, king in, 

Burgundy, 34; regent for Charles 

the Bald in Italy, 85. 
Bourgogne, described, 402. 
Bouvines, battle of, 325-327, 430. 
^Brandenburg, mark, beginnings of, 

146 ; favored by Hohenstaufen, 

2S0. 
Bretislav, duke of Bohemia, 188 ; 

makes Prague metropolis, 188 ; 

king, 189. 
Bruno of Carinthia (see Gregory 

V). 
Bruno of Merseburg, Saxon his- 
torian, 238 ; account of Saxon 

war, 241. 
Bulgarian church, relations with 

Rome and with Constantinople, 

66-67. 
Burchard, duke of Swabia, 103. 
Burchard, duke of Swabia under 

Otto I, 132-133. 
Burgundy, kingdom of, 39, 122, 

126; annexed to the Empire, 

179-181. 

Calixtus II, pope, signs Concordat 
of Worms, 269. 

Canon-Law, early codifications, 
"jd ; Pseudo-Tsidorian collection, 
78-80 ; basis, 582-584 ; the De- 
cretum, 586 ; corpus juris cano- 
nici, 587 ; scope and process, 588- 
591 ; resisted by public courts, 
591-592- 

Canons Regular, 549, 560. 

Canossa, interview, 253-254. 



Capitanei, higher nobility in Lom- 
bardy, 183, 523. 

Cardinal College, established, 217. 

Carolingian Renaissance, 436-437. 

Champagne, described, 403. 

Chapter, in church-law, 549-550. 

Charlemagne, administrative poli- 
cy, 6 ; coronation, 6 ; imperial 
theory, 7, 8, 13 ; relation to pa- 
pacy, 47-48; educational efforts, 
437-439 ; relation to feudalism, 
479-480. 

Charles, son of Charlemagne, 10, 
12, 13. 

Charles the Bald, birth of, 22 ; 
new grant, 24 ; Treaty of Ver- 
dun, 29 ; emperor, 33, 85 ; re- 
treat and death, 86. 

Charles the Simpie, y] ; king of 
France, 100, 405-406 ; invests 
Rolf with Normandy, 407; de- 
posed by nobles, 409. 

Charles of Anjou, invades Italy, 
353 ; defeats Manfred at Bene- 
vento, 354; defeats Conrad at 
Tagliacozzo, 355. 

Charles, duke of Lorraine, Caro- 
lingian candidate in France, 

413- 

Charles of Provence, son of Lo- 
thair I, 31. 

Chivalry, 487-488, 507. 

Citeaux, rise, 577. 

Civitate, battle of, 227. 

Clairvaux, monastery, 458-459. 

Clement II, German pope, 203. 

Clermont, council, 263-264, 361. 

Cluny, monastery, reform, 166, 
167, 181 ; adopted by Plenry III, 
194 ; affects papacy, 199 ; its 
effect on learning, 443 ; history. 



596 



IxYDEX. 



561-564; against episcopal au- 
thority, 566; decline, 577. 
Communes, in Italy, 522-528 ; in 
France, 52S-53S ; at Le Mans, 
534; at Cambrai, 534 ; at Noyon 
and St. Quentin, 535 ; at Laon, 

535-538- 

"Conciliar" Theory of Church 
Government, Si. 

Confirmation, as a sacrament, 544. 

Conrad I, king of Germany, 100; 
his policy, 1 01-102 ; legend of 
his death, 102. 

Conrad II, election, 175-176; alli- 
ance with Knut of Denmark, 
176; holds Lorraine, 177; Ro- 
man journey, 178; political theo- 
ries, 182-185 ; favors poi^ular 
movements, 183-184; legisla- 
tion at Rome, 1S5. 

Conrad III, king of Germany, 
opposed to king Lothair, 275; 
supports him in Italy, 27S ; 
elected, 279 ; family alliances, 
281 ; joins the Crusade, 281. 

Conrad IV, king of Germany, 352. 

Conrad (Corradino), son of Con- 
rad IV, expedition to Italy, 354 ; 
capture and execution, 355. 

Conrad, son-in-law of Otto I, duke 
of Franconia, 114; in rebellion, 
130; at Lechfeld, 132-133. 

Conrad the Younger, candidate for 
the kingdom in Germany, 175- 
176; in rebellion against Conrad 
II, 177 ; duke of Carinthia, 183. 

Conrad, son of Rudolf of Bur- 
gundy, under German protec- 
tion, 126. 

Conrad, son of Henry IV of Ger- 
many, king of Italy, vassal to 



papacy, ibz ; excluded from sue 
cession in Germany, 265. 

Constance, heiress of Sicily, 315 
under care of Innocent III 
318. 

Constance, Peace of, 310-31 1. 

Consular cities in France, 538-539 

Corpus Juris canonici, 56S-5S7. 

Councils, in Italian cities, 526. 

Crescentian family, at the head o 
Roman politics, 152, 153. 

Cross, judgment of, 10. 

Crusades, first suggestion, 157- 
1 58, 360 ; numbers, 359 ; at 
tempt of Gregory VII, 361 
First, 264, 362-366 ; betweei 
first and second, 366-374 ; Sec 
ond, 374-376 ; Third, 377-379 
Fourth, 379-383; Fifth, 383- 
387 ; Sixth, 387-38S ; children': 
crusades, 389 ; effects upon Eu 
rope, 388-397. 

Curia regis, royal administrativ( 
body in France, 431. 

Dagobert of Pisa, patriarch o 

Jerusalem, 366. 
Damasus II, German pope, 203. 
Damiani, Peter, 222-223. 
Damietta, in crusades, 383-384. 
Dandolo, Henry, 380. 
"Decretal system," 81-82 ; 213. 
'' Dictatus Papae,'' 244-245. 
Dionysius " Exiguus," first codi 

fier of canon-law, 76. 
Dominicans, organized, 343 ; his 

tory and constitution, 578-581 
Donation of Constantine, 50. 
" Ducatus," Roman, 50. 
Duns Scotus, Franciscan scholai 

464. 



INDEX. 



597 



Eberhard, duke of Franconia, 112. 

Eccelino da Romano, 349. 

Eckhart of Meissen, candidate for 
kingdom in Germany, 162. 

Edessa, county of, 367. 

Einhard, historian, 438. 

Empire, its extent under Charle- 
magne, 3-4 ; division of (806), 9, 
ID, II, 12; division of (817), 18 ; 
attempts at division (817-840), 
21-24 ; confined to Italy, 31 ; 
its relation to the papacy, 48-49 ; 
dependent upon papal sanction, 
83-84 ; broken into states, 90 ; 
held by different nationalities, 
118-122; won permanently by 
Germany, 13S ; comparison of 
Otto I with Charlemagne, 141- 
143 ; imperial theory of Otto III, 
1 58-1 61 ; the Hohenstaufen pol- 
icy, 274; under Frederic I, 282- 
312 ; contested elections of 
Philip of Swabia, 319, and Otto 
of Brunswick, 320. 

Enzio, son of Frederic II, 349. 

Erigena, John Scotus, British 
scholar, 441-442. 

Ernst of Swabia, in conspiracy 
against Conrad II, 177. 

Eucharist (see Transubstantia- 
tion), 544. 

Eudes, king of France, 405-406. 

Eudes, duke of Champagne, claims 
Burgundy, 174; in conspiracy 
against Conrad II, 177 ; invades 
Burgundy, 180; gives up his 
claim, 181 ; joins Lombard con- 
spiracy, 184. 

Eugenius III, pope, 295. 

" Evangelical " theory of church 
government, 82. 



Exarch of Ravenna, 44. 

Farfa, monastery, reform, 562. 

Feudal "aids," 491. 

Feudalism, defined, 478-480 ; in- 
heritance of fiefs, 481-482 ; ap- 
plied to office and money charges, 
484; primogeniture, 485; fe- 
male succession, 485 ; mortmain, 
486 ; nobility, 486-488 ; obliga- 
tions of vassal, 488-493 ; of the 
lord, 494 ; codifications of feudal 
law, 496 ; feudal hierarchy, 497- 
502 ; feudal monarchy, 503-506 ; 
conservative forces, 507-508. 

Feudal hierachy, 497-502. 

Feudal monarchy, 503-506. 

Fidelitas, 488. 

" Field of Lies," 23, 59. 

Flanders, descr/oed, 403. 

Fontenay, battle of, 25, 26. 

Formosus, pope, crowns Arnulf, 
117 ; trial, 117-118. 

Foulke, archbishop of Rheims, 
405-406. 

Franciscans, organized, 343 ; his- 
tory and constitution, 528-581. 

Franconia, described, 97-98; under 
the Conrads, 98. 

Frankish Church, 46 ff.; organized 
by Boniface, 46. 

Franks, converted to orthodox 
Christianity, 44, 45; social condi- 
tions, 45 ; defenders of Rome, 

45- 

Frederic, duke of Lorraine, 177. 

Frederic of Hohenstaufen, candi- 
date for kingdom in Germany, 

275- 
Frederic (Barbarossa), duke of 
Swabia, king of Germany, 282 ; 



598 



INDEX. 



policy in Italy, 283, 291 ; de- 
stroys the Roman commune, 
296-297 ; conflict with Hadrian 
IV, 297-300 ; with Alexander 
III, 300-312 ; destroys Milan, 
301 ; defeated at Legnano, 306; 
signs Treaty of Venice, 308 ; 
Peace of Constance, 310-31 1; 
his crusade, 312, 377. 
Frederic II, king of Germany, 316; 
elected king of the Romans, 
319; early life, 323; in Ger- 
many, 324 ; Bouvines, 325-326 ; 
against papacy, 344 ; excom- 
municated, 346 ; legislation for 
Sicily, 347 ; German Landfrieden, 

348 ; prevents Roman council, 

349 \ his crusading policy, 384- 
• 386. 

Freeman, 515-519- 

French monarchy, 398-433 ; com- 
pared with German, 400-401, 
406, 41 1 ; double character, 41 5- 
416; elements of strength, 417 
ff. ; primogeniture, 418 ; growth 
of domain, 418-423. 

Gascony, described, 402. 

Gerbert (pope Sylvester II), 
against papacy, 152; defends 
the " Galilean liberty," 153-154 ; 
relations with French and Ger- 
man rulers, 1 54-1 55 ; pope, 155; 
letter on the Crusade, 157-158 ; 
imperial theory, 1 58-1 59. 

German clergy, resists the Lateran 
flecrees of 1059 ; refuses a coun- 
cil, 242 ; holds national council 
at Worms, 248-249. 

German Frontier, extension under 
Hohenstaufen, 273-274. 



Ghibelline, Swabian (Hohenstau- 
fen) party, 272. 

Gilbert, duke of Lorraine, 112. 

Gnesen, made metropolis of 
Poland, 156. 

Godfrey of Bouillon, 256; king of 
Jerusalem, 366. 

Godfrey of Lorraine, marries Bea- 
trice of Tuscany, 192 ; driven 
back to Lorraine, 215. 

Godfrey the Younger, of Lorraine, 
marries Matilda of Tuscany, 192. 

Goslar, synod, 169-170. 

Gottesfrieden, defined, 261, 503 
(see Peace and Truce of God). 

Gozelo, duke of Lorraine, 177, 
184. 

Gran, made metropolis of Hun- 
gary, 157- 

Gratian, canon-lawyer, 586-587. 

Gregory I (the Great), pope, 43, 
44. 

Gregory IV, pope, 58 ; in Frankish 
politics, 59-60. 

Gregory V, German pope, crowns 
Otto III, 153. 

Gregory VI, German pope, buys 
papacy from Benedict IX, 200 ; 
deposed, 202. 

Gregory VII, pope ; (see Hilde- 
brand). 

Gregory IX, pope, 345 ; excom- 
municates Frederic II, 346, 385 ; 
invades Naples, 386. 

Gregory of Tours, 45. 

Guelf, German ducal family, 272 ; 
name of papal and popular party 
in Italy, 272 ; civilizes the North- 
east, 279. 

"Guelf and Ghibelline," defined, 
272. 



INDEX. 



599 



Guido of Spoleto, king of Italy, 

37, 90 ; emperor, 93. 
Guido of Tuscany, 121. 
Guilds, 521. 

Hadrian II, pope, absolves Lothair 
II, 73; his election, 82. 

Hadrian IV, pope, in alliance and 
conflict with Frederic I, 297- 
300. 

Hagano, favorite of Chajles the 
Simple, 407. 

Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, 
captures Henry IV, 235 ; co- 
regent, 236. 

Heinrich Raspe, anti-king of Ger- 
many, 351. 

Henry I, king of Germany, 103 ; 
policy, 104 ; treaty with Bava- 
ria, 104 ; gains Lorraine, 104 ; 
defense against Hungarians, 
105-109. 

Henry II, king of Germany, pro- 
cess of election, 162 ; imperial 
policy, 163 ; appoints bishops, 
164; reforms monasteries, 166 ; 
attempts to annex Burgundy, 
167 ; crowned emperor, 168 ; 
vigorous administration, 171. 

Henry III, king of Germany, early 
training, 185-187; subdues Bohe- 
mia, 189-190 ; Hungary, 191 ; 
marries Agnes of Poitiers, 193 ; 
supports Cluny reform, 198 ; at 
Sutri, 202 ; crowned emperor, 
203. 

Henry IV, king of Germany, 233 ; 
under the bishops, 235-236; 
character, 237-238 ; war against 
Saxons, 241-242; deposed and 
excommunicated 249 ; to Can- 



ossa, 252-254; emperor, 258; 
later policy, 260-262; final, re- 
bellion, 264-265. 

Henry V, king of Germany, 265 ; 
becomes anti-papal, 266-269. 

Henry VI, king of Germany, mar- 
ries Constance of Sicily, 315 ; 
gains Sicily, 316 ; controls Italy, 

Henry I, king of France, in alli- 
ance with Conrad II, 180 ; in- 
creases the domain, 419. 

Henry, brother of Otto I, duke of 
Bavaria, 114; true to Otto, 

130-133- 

Henry, duke of Austria, 281. 

Henry the Lion (Guelf), 280 ; re- 
gains Saxony and Bavaria (di- 
minished), 282; deprived of both 
fiefs, 309-310. 

Henry the Proud (Guelf), duke of 
Bavaria, 276 ; regent, 279; de- 
prived of Saxony and Bavaria, 
280. 

Henry " the Quarrelsome " of Ba- 
varia, 148. 

Heribert, archbishop of Mainz, 
164-166, 181. 

Hermann of Luxemburg, king of 
Germany, 256, 258, 261. 

Hermann, duke of Swabia, 112. 

Hermann of Swabia, candidate for 
kingdom in Germany, 162. 

Hildebrand (Gregory VII), first 
appearance, 201 ; adviser of 
Leo IX, 204-205 ; 216 ; person- 
ality, 230-231 ; election, 240; in- 
vites German clergy to council, 
242 ; his papal theory, 245 ; 
defied by German clergy, 24S- 
249; deposes Henry IV, 249; sets 



600 



INDEX. 



out for Germany, 253 ; Canossa, 
254; driven from Rome, 259; 
death, 259 ; attempt at crusade, 
361 ; dealings with Berengar of 
Tours, 447. 

Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, 
opposes Lothair II, 69 ; con- 
flict with Nicholas I, 74-76 ; 
doctrinal activity, 441-443. 

Hirschau, monastery, 563. 

" Hispana," Spanish collection of 
Canon-law, 77. 

Hoechst, synod of, 165-166. 

Hohenstaufen (Swabian) family, 
272 ff.; imperial policy, 274; 
claim Tuscany, 275 ; the Nor- 
man alliance, 31 5. 

Holy Orders, as a sacrament, 545. 

Homage, 488. 

Honorius II (Cadalus of Parma), 
anti-pope, 234 ; failure, 237 ; 
death, 239. 

Honorius III, pope, 344. 

Hospitallers, 372-374. 

Hugh (Capet), duke of Francia, 
154, 411-414; king of France, 
414-419. 

Hugo {caudichis), cardinal, 248. 

Hugo of Provence, 121 ; king of 
Italy, 123 ; plans for gaining 
support, 126; defeated, 127. 

Hungarians, threaten Europe, 94 ; 
overrun Bavaria, 96; invade Sax- 
ony, 106-109; invade Germany, 
France and Italy, 130-131; de- 
feated on the Lechfeld, 132-134. 

Hungary, Christianized, 156; nom- 
inal vassalage to Rome, 1 57 ; 
heathen reaction, 186, 190; new 
raids, 191; vassal state of Ger- 
many, 191. 



Iconoclastic controversy, 65-66. 

Ignatius, patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, 64, 68. 

Industrial classes, 519-521. 

Ingeborg, queen of Philip Augus- 
tus, 327-329. 

Innocent II, pope, crowns emperor 
Lothair, 277; supported by Ger- 
man party, 278. 

Innocent III, pope, 314; Italian 

policy, 317-318 ; against Philip 

of Swabia, 31^-322; supports 

Frederic II, 326-327 ; against 

Philip Augustus, 327-329; 

against John of England, 329- 

331; against Spain, 331-332; 

true successor of Gregory VII, 
-) ^ o 

Innocent IV, pope, 350. 

Inquisition, foundation, 341-342 ; 
process, 590-591. 

Irmengard of Ivrea, centre of Lom- 
bard politics, 123. 

Isidore, bishop of Seville, codifier 
of canon-law, yj, 79. 

Isle de France, described, 405. 

Italy, under Justinian, 44. 

Jerusalem, taken by Arabs and 
Turks, 360 ; by crusaders, 365; 
kingdom of, 367; taken by Sa- 
laddin, 377. 

John VIII, pope, crowns Louis the 
Stammerer king, 33, 84 ; crowns 
Charles the Bald, 85 ; unites 
Italy against Arabs, 86 ; retreats 
to France and crowns Karl the 
Fat, d>7. 

John IX, pope, 118. 

John X, pope, defeats Arabs on 
the Garigliano, 119, 123. 



INDEX. 



601 



John XII, pope, 135 ; calls upon 

Otto I against Berengar, 1 36 ; 

crowns Otto, 137 ; trial and 

deposition, 139-140. 
John XIII, pope, 143. 
John XV, pope, calls Otto III to 

Rome, 152. 
John XIX, pope, 178 ; crowns 

Conrad II, 179. 
John, king of England, 325-326 ; 

conflict _ with^-piapacy, Zr^liy^ > 

Magna Charta, 331". 
John, St., Knights of (see Hospi-^ 

tallers). 
Judith Guelf, wife of Louis the 

Pious, 22, 23. 
Justinian, Eastern Emperor, 44 ; 

codifies the Roman Law, 57. 

Karl the Fat, crowned emperor, 
34 ; treaty with Northmen, 35 ; 
deposed, 36. 

Karlmann, son of Ludwig the Ger- 
man, in Italy, 87. 

Kiersy, edict, 481-482. 

Knut, king of Denmark and Eng- 
land, 176 ; at Rome, 179. 

Lambert of Hersfeld, historian, 
account of Canossa, 253-254. 

Lambert of Spoleto, son of Guido, 
emperor, 93, 1 18. 

Lambert, marquis of Tuscany, 123. 

Landfrieden, proclaimed by Henry 
III, 194, 261; defined, 503. 

Last Unction, as a sacrament, 

545- 
Lateran Council of 121 5, 342-343. 
Latin Empire of Constantinople, 

382-383. 
Lausitz, mark, 146. 



Law, Germanic and Roman ideas 
of, 56, 57. 

Lay-abbots, 557. 

Lay - Investiture, prohibition de- 
creed, 243 ; practiced by Henry 
IV, 247 ; chief point of conflict, 
248 ff; agreements of Paschal 
II, 267-268 ; settled by con- 
cordat of Worms, 269; conces- 
sions of emperor Lothair, 277. 

Lechfeld, Battle on the, 132-134. 

Legnano, Battle of, 306-307. 

Leo I, pope, 43 ; holds East Illyria 
for Rome, 66. 

Leo III, pope, crowns Charle- 
magne, 6. 

Leo IV, extends the walls of Rome, 
61. 

Leo VIII, pope, 140-143. 

Leo IX (Bruno of Toul), pope, 
203 ; nominee of Henry III, 204 ; 
elected by Romans, 205 ; papal 
theory, 205 ; in France, 206-207 ; 
in'' Germany, 208; independent 
of empire, 214 ; defeated by Nor- 
mans, 227 ; invests them with 
southern Italy, 228-229. 

Leopold, duke of Austria, made 
duke of Bavaria, 2S0. 

Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, 
historian, 120 ; embassy to Con- 
stantinople, 144-145. 

Lodi, enters Lombard League, 303. 

Lombard Cities, 284-287 ; relation 
to empire, 288, 290 ; before 
Frederic I, 290-291 ; under Fred- 
eric I (see Lombard League). 

Lombard League, beginnings, 302 ; 
builds Alexandria, 304 ; defeats 
P>ederic I at Legnano, 306-307 ; 
gains in Treaty of Venice, 308- 



602 



INDEX. 



309 ; in Peace of Constance, 
31 1 ; renewed against Frederic 
II, 345 ; defeated at Cortenuova, 

348. 

Lothair the Saxon, king of Ger- 
many, 275 ; gives way to papacy, 
275 ; makes Guelf alliance, 276; 
invests a duke of Apulia jointly 
with pope, 278. 

Lothair, king of France, 4I2'.-4I3. 

Louis I (The Pious), coronation, 
13; accession to power, 14; 
character, 1 5 ; relatioi^s with the 
pope, 17 ; recrowned by the 
pope, 17 ; church reforms, iS ; 
death, 24. 

Lombards, the, 43, 44, 46 ; con- 
quered by Pippin, 47. 

Lorraine {Lotharii Regmtni), 30. 

Lothair, son of Louis the Pious, 
receives Bavaria, 17 ; crowned 
king, 19; goes into Italy, 21 ; 
godM-her to Charles the Bald, 
22 ; occluded from imperial func- 
tions, 22 ; given eastern half of 
empire, 24; Treaty of Verdun, 
29 ; death, 31 ; government in 
Rome, 55-58. 

Lothair II, king of Lorraine, 31 ; 
seeks divorce, 68 ; supported by 
Lorraine, 69; condemned by 
Nicholas I, 71 ; persists in his 
defiance, 72-73 ; his death, 73- 

74- 

Lothair, son of Hugo, king of 
Italy, 126-127. 

Louis II, emperor, in Italy, 31, 32, 
33 ; revises papal election, 60, 
61 ; feebly defends Lothair II, 
71 ; letter to eastern emperor, 
83-84. 



Louis, son of Boso, holds Prov- 
ence, i^, 90 ; emperor, driven 
home, 119. 

Louis the Stammerer, king of 
West Franks, -^y 

Louis III, king of West Franks, 

34~35- 

Louis IV, d'Outremer, king of 
France, 411-412. 

Louis V, king of France, 413. 

Louis VI. king of France, increases 
the domain, 420. 

Louis VII, king of P'rance, in- 
creases the domain, 420-421. 

Ludolf, duke of Saxony, 99. 

Ludolf, son of Otto I, named as 
his successor, 114; invades Italy, 
1 28 ; in rebellion against Otto I, 

130-131- 

Ludwig the German, 17 ; receives 
Bavaria, 19; kingdom, 20; " Field 
of Lies," 23 ; Diet at Nymwegen, 
24 ; limited to Bavaria, 24 ; 
Treaty of Verdun, 29 ; Partition 
of Meersen, 32. 

Ludwig the Child, king of Ger- 
many, 94; dies, 100. 

Luitpold, markgraf in Bavaria, 96, 
107. 

Magdeburg, created archbishopric, 

138. 
Manfred, son of Frederic 11, 352; 

chief of Sicilian kingdom, 353. 
Manicheans, 221 ; 333-337; 447- 

449- 
Marozia, centre of Roman politics, 

121 ; marries (2d) Guido of Tus- 
cany, 123; marries (3d) Hugo 
of Burgundy, 123-124. 
Marriage, as a sacrament, 545. 



INDEX. 



603 



Matilda of Tuscany, marries God- 
frey the Younger of Lorraine, 
192; devoted to papacy, 229; 
territory claimed by Hohen- 
staufen family, 275; held by 
Empire, 276 ; terms with Guelfs, 
277. 

Meersen, partition of, 84. 

Meissen, mark, 146. 

Mendicant Orders, in the service 
of learning, 462-464 ; history 
and organization, 578-581. 

Merseburg, bishopric under Mag- 
deburg, 138. 

Metropolitan (see Archbishop). 

Mieczislav, king of Poland, 176. 

Migrations, German, 5. 

Milan, political organization, 220 
tyrannizes other cities, 288 
besieged by Frederic I, 298 
destroyed by Frederic I and 
communes, 301 ; rebuilt by 
League, 302 ; head of League, 
303 ; captured by Frederic II, 
349; consular government, 523- 

524- 

Millennial year, 149-150; 567. 

Ministri [nunistcriales), 1 1 i-i 1 2, 
423, 498. 

Mis si Dominici, 7 ; capitulary de 
in is sis, 8. 

Monastery, foundation, 572 ; ad- 
ministration, 572-573 ; member- 
ship, 573-575- 

Monastic clergy, 556-581. 

Monasticism, principles, 555-557 ; 
revivals, 558 ; organization by 
Louis I, 559. 

Montfort, Simon de, 340 ff. 

Moravia, duchy of, 91. 

Mortmain, 486. 



Municipal liberty, destroyed in 

France, 539. 
Mysticism, 456-459. 

Nicholas I, pope, nominated by 
Empire, 63; dealings with Con- 
stantinople, 63-68 ; with Bul- 
garia, 66-67 ; with Loth air of 
Lorraine, 68-73 5 "^i^^ ^^^ 
metropolitan power, 74-76. 

Nicholas II, reforming candidate 
for papacy, 216; calls Lateran 
Synod of 1059, 217-219. 

Nilus, St., hermit reformer, 568. 

Nobility, 486-488 ; tioble service, 

511- 
Nominalism and Realism, 449- 

45^- 

Norbert, archlushop of Magde- 
burg, 275. 

Nordgau of Bavaria, 147. 

Normandy, described, 404. 

Normans, in Italy, 223-^224 ; vas- 
sals of the Empire, 226; against 
Leo IX, 226-228 ; vassals of 
papacy, 228-229. 

Octavian, son of Alberic, pope 
(John XII), 135, 139-140. 

Odo (Eudes), count of Paris, king 
in Neustria, 37-38. 

Oppenheim, agreement, 251-252. 

Oriental feudalism, 369-370. 

Ostmark of Bavaria, 95, 147. 

Otto (Eudes) of Paris, king in 
Neustria, 90. 

Otto the Illustrious, duke of Sax- 
ony, 99 ; declines the kingship, 
100. 

Otto I, king of Germany, nomi- 
nated by Henry I, no; corona- 
tion, 110-112; to Italy, 128; 



604 



INDEX. 



marries Adelaide, queen of Italy, 
129; strengthens royal power, 
in Germany, 1 30-1 31 ; defeats 
Hungarians, 132-134; secures 
coronation of Otto II, 136 ; 
crowned emperor, 137 ; decree 
of 962, 1 38; subdues Berengar, 
139; deposes John XII, 139- 
141; comparison with Charle- 
magne, 141-143; papal policy, 
143; gains the princes of Cen- 
tral Italy, 144; negotiates mar- 
riage with Greek princess, 144- 

145- 

Otto II, king of Germany, 145; 
territorial policy in Germany, 
146-14S; invades France, 412. 

Otto III, king of Germany, mi- 
nority, 150; character, 151; 
names a German pope, 152 ; 
crowned by him, 1 53 ; under 
Gerbert's influence, 155 ; his 
piety, 155, 161; imperial theory, 
15S-61. 

Otto IV, king of Germany, 320. 

Otto of Swabia, 147. 

Otto of Freising, historian, 28 1, 
282, 290, 295-296. 

Palatini, royal advisers in France, 

424, 431. 
Palliutn, 555. 
Pandulf of Capua, 144. 
Papacy, development of, 42 ; value 

of, 42 ; under Gregory I, 44 ; 

allied with Carolingian Franks, 

46 ; relation to empire, 4S-49 ; 

its threefold function, 49-51 ; 

conflict of three functions, 52 ; 

controlled by early Carolingians, 

53 ; chief executive power in 



Rome, 57; alliance with France, 
85 ; heads an Italian combina- 
tion against Arabs, 86 ; decline 
in tenth century, 11 5-1 17; re- 
stored by Otto I, 139-144 ; new 
corruption, 151; under foreign- 
ers, 153-155 ; takes up the popu- 
lar cause, 208 ; in danger from 
the empire, 214 ; relations with 
the nations, 232-233 ; in 1200, 

3M- 
Papal election, 52 ; its relation to 

the empire, 54, 60 ; by cardinals, 

217-219. 
Parish clergy, 551-552. 
Parlement de Paris, royal court of 

justice in France, 432. 
Paschal I, pope, crowns Lothair,55. 
Paschasius Radbertus, Frankish 

scholar, 440-441. 
" Pataria," party in Lombardy, 

Paulus Diaconus, historian, 438. 

Pavia, reform council, 169. 

Peace of God, 569. 

Penance, 544. 

Peter, the Apostle, 43. 

Peter of Amiens, preaches first 

crusade, 362. 
Peter of'^Bruys, t,t,T). 
Peter de Vinea, 347. 
Petrine theory, 43. 
Petrus Lombardus, magister sen- 

teiitiartim, 463. 
Philip I, king of France, increases 

the domain, 420. 
Philip II (Augustus), king of 

France, enmity to Guelf party, 

320, 325-366 ; divorce case, 327- 

329 ; increases the domain, 421- 

422. 



INDEX. 



605 



Philip of Swabia, king of Ger- 
many, 319-322. 

Photius, patriarch of Constanti- 
nople, 64. 

Picardy, descnbed, 403. 

Pilgrimages, through Hungary, 

157- 
Pippin, son of Charlemagne, 10, 

12, 13. 
Pippin, son of Louis the Pious, 

in Aquitaine, 17, 19; 23, 24. 
Podesta, 526. 
Poland, leading Slavonic state, 

174 ; in ruins, 186 ; vassal state 

of Germany, 192. 
Predestination, controversy, 442. 
Prevot, royal official in France, 

425-427. 
Primogeniture, in French mon- 
archy, 4i8;^ifi fiefs, 485. 
" Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals," 78- 

80. 

Raoul of Bourgogne, king of 

France, 409-41 1. 
Rabanus Maurus, archbishop of 

Mainz, 441, 442. 
Ratramnus, Frankish scholar, 441. 
Ravenna, exarch of, 44. 
Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, 

337-341- 
Raymond VII, count of Toulouse, 

341-342. 

Regalia, 298-299. 

Regensburg, 95. 

Richard of Aversa, duke of Capua, 
229. 

Richard, king of England, cru- 
sade, 377-379- 

Robert, duke of Francia, 406, 408, 
409. 



Robert Guelf, king of Purgundy, 

90. 
Robert Guiscard, duke of Apulia, 

etc., 228 ; defends Rome against 

Henry IV, 258-259 ; schemes of 

conquest and death, 260. 
Roger, king of Sicily, 278. 
Rolf, duke of Normandy, 407. 
Roman commune, 291-297. 
Roman Constitution of 824, 56- 

58 ; of 962, 138-139. 
Roman Law, revived study, 289. 
Romuald, St., hermit reformer, 

568. 
Roncaglia, first diet, 290 ; diet of 

1 1 58, 298-299. 
Roscellinus of Compiegne, 449- 

452- 
Roswitha, nun of Gandersheim, 

445- 
Rothad, bishop of Soissons, dis- 
ciplined by Hincmar, appeals to 
Rome, 74 ; reinstated by Nicholas 

1,75- 
Royal Domain in France, gradual 

increase, 418-422. 

Rudolf, count and abbot of St. 
Maurice, king of Burgundy, 38. 

Rudolf of Upper Burgundy, king 
of Italy, 122; king of all Bur- 
gundy, 122-126, 166. 

Rudolf HI, king of Burgundy, 167 ; 
at Rome, 179. 

Rudolf of Swabia, king of Ger- 
many, 255-256. 

Sachsenspiegel, 496. 
Sacraments, defined, 542-545. 
Saladdin, 376-379. 
San Germano, peace, 346. 
Saxon War, 241-242 ; 246. 



606 



INDEX. 



Saxony, duchy of, described, 98 ; 
under the house of Ludolf, 99 ; 
under Franconian emperors, 
241 ff; under Guelfs (dimin- 
ished), 276 ff ; under Albert the 
Bear, 280 ; under Bernhard of 
Anhalt (diminished), 310. 

Scholares vagaiites, 472, 475. 

Secular Clergy, 541-555- 

Seligenstadt, synod of, 164-165. 

Septimania, described, 402. 

Serfs, 512-515; emancipation, 515. 

Sergius II, pope, 60 ; refuses fidel- 
ity to king of Italy, 61. 

Sergius III, pope, 123. 

Simony, defined, 195; increased 
by feudalism, 196; effect upon 
clergy, 196-197 ; upon society, 
197 ; attacked by Cluny, 197- 
198. 

Slavery, 51 1-5 12. 

Spanish states, under Innocent 

ni, zz^. 

States of the Church, 50 ; con- 
solidated by Innocent III, 318; 

Stem-Duchies, described, 95-98 ; 
treatment by king Conrad I, 
101-102 ; by Henry I, 104-105 ; 
by Otto I, 112-114; 131, 132; 
by Conrad II, 182-183, by Henry 
III, 187. 

Stephen IV, pope, crowns Louis 

I> 54- 
Stephen V, pope, 17 ; crowns Louis 

the Pious at Rheims, 18. 
Stephen VI, pope, 117. 
Stephen X (Frederic of Lorraine), 

pope, 215. 
Stephen I, king of Hungary, 157. 
Strassburg oaths, 26, 27, 28. 
Sutri, synod, 202. 



Sw^abia, (Alemannia), described, 96- 

97- 
Swatopluk (Zwentibold), king in 

Lorraine, 92. 
Swatopluk (Zwentibold), duke of 

Moravia, 91. 
Sylvester II, pope (see Gerbert of 

Aurillac). 
Sylvester III, pope, 201 ; deposed, 

202. 

Tancred of Hauteville, 316. 

Templars, 372-374. 

Teutberga, wife of Lothair II, 68- 

74- 
Teutonic Order, 372-374. 
Thankmar, son of Henry I, 113. 
Theganus, Frankish historian, 13. 
Theodora, wife of Theophylactus, 

120. 
Theophano, queen of Otto II, 145; 

regent for Otto III, 150. 
Theophylactus, head of Tusculan 

family, 120; consul or senator 

at Rome, 121. 
Thomas Aquinas, Dominican scho- 
lar, 464. 
Transubstantiation, controversy, 

440-441; 446-449- 
Tripolis, county of, 367. 
Trosly, synod, 408. 
Truce of God, 170 ; recognized by 

Henry III, 193 ; history, 570- 

571- 
Turks, in Syria, 360. 
Tusculan family, controls papacy, 

199. 

Universities, 465-471. 
University of Paris, 452, 453, 
Unstrut, battle on the, 109. 



INDEX. 



607 



Urban II, pope, 261-262; preaches 
the first crusade, 361, 263-264. 

Vakjassores, lower nobility in Lom- 

bardy, 183, 523. 
Venice, in the fourth crusade, 

379-383- 
Venice, treaty of, 308-309. 
Verdun, treaty of, 28-30. 
Victor II, German pope, 204, 214. 
Victor III, pope, 261. 
St. Victor, monastery near Paris, 

457- 
Villain, 517 ; burdens upon, 518, 

519- 

Wala, counsellor of Charlemagne, 

16. 
Waldenses, doctrine, 334-335. 
Waldrada, concubine of Lothair 

II, 68-74. 



Waldus, Peter, 334, 

Wibert, imperial chancellor, bis- 
hop of Ravenna, 239; anti-pope 
(Clement III), 257. 

Widukind, Saxon historian, 445. 

William II, Norman king of Sici- 

>' 315- 

William, duke of Aquitaine, ac- 
cepts crown of Italy for his 
son, 174 ; withdraws acceptance, 
178. 

William of Champeaux, 453, 457. 

William the Iron Arm, Norman 
leader, 225. 

William of Normandy, 232. 

William of Occam, 460. 

Wittelsbach, Otto of, duke of 
Bavaria, 310. 

Worms, Concc^dat of, prelimina- 
ries, 267-268 ; settlement, 269 ; 

27 1—27 2. 

Worms, council (1076), 248. 



